Rating: 
Summary: Jury returns--and with a true verdict!
Review: He's back! And, if you'll pardon the pun, with a bang! Richard Jury, the mainstay
character of Martha Grimes' immensely successful British police procedural series (the titles are all
names of actual pubs) centralizes the action in her latest, "The Blue Last," in what will surely
quieten critics of her last Jury ("The Lamorna Wink") as having too little Jury (he'd been sent to
North Ireland for investigations and other characters conducted this investigation!). No matter. Grimes produces one of her best with "The Blue Last"! In 1939, during a bombing blitz by the Germans, the Blue Last, a pub owned by the
Tynedale Brewing Company, is destroyed and in it, the daughter of the Tynedale family. By sheer
luck (coincidence?), the family nanny had only moments before taken the daughter's baby girl,
Maisie, out of the pub for some fresh air, leaving her own baby, of the same age, in the pub, and thus
to her own doom as well. Enter DCI Mickey Haggarty of the London police, who, almost 60 years
later, has reason to suspect that, actually, the babies' identities had been switched and the heiress to
the Tynedale fortune is actually the nanny's own daughter! Haggarty calls in his longtime friend
Jury to assist. Judy is skeptical. However, Haggarty reveals that he is dying of terminal cancer,
with only a few weeks to live and Jury cannot refuse. However, enter Murder One, in Haggarty's own patch, yet, coincidentally, the victim,
Simon Croft, is a close friend of the Tynedale family, who's been writing a book of the London war
years. The book has disappeared. Was it because he was about to expose a scandal in the Tynedale
family as well? Thus, now the two cases are inextricably intertwined. And with these basic
premises, Grimes is off for the chase. And "The Blue Last" is vintage Grimes. Jury is clearly in command of the investigation
and of the book and Grimes seems comfortable in letting Scotland Yard take charge. But the book is not simply about investigating a murder. All the Long Pidd characters come forging to the front,
too, as Grimes delights in "shaking them from the branches." It's Christmas, with its collateral
imagary, atmosphere, and tone, which the reader readily picks up. Grimes takes a detour for a
couple of chapters as she stops the Jury deliberation of his own investigation to permit Melrose Plant
and Marshall Trueblook to make a quick trip to Florence to authenticate what Trueblood hopes is a genuine Masaccio polyptych, which he'd bought for a steal at a local antiques shop. It's an excellent breather, as it were, a genuine bit of comic relief (actually it's difficult to find characters more
comical than the Long Pidd crowd, as readers of this series know full well!). And she offers some
good art history lessons as well! Noteworthy, too, is that the author has taken the time to answer
many questions about her characters, especially Jury, himself a survivor of the London Blitz (his
mother was killed during a bombing raid and his father died in action as an RAF pilot). There are
few questions about him that can be asked. Certainly, Grimes seems to feel she's answered them all.
She also seems to make this one even more personal to her own nature. A complex man, an ideal protagonist for any novel, Jury is a man who refuses to compromise his
well-founded principles, yet compassion, understanding, and sympathy for all those who deserve it
are within his character range. Coupled with these descriptives, Grimes adds her other memorable
characters, all with their own expanse of complexity and depth.
All the accolades aside, some readers may find the ending a bit unsettling; indeed, it's a strong
ending for a Jury novel. Yet, to the alert reader, Grimes is fully in charge and the ending is in
keeping with the rest of the book, no more, no less. And one's reaction to the ending, of course,
should not be the soul arbiter of the book's effectiveness. Grimes knows what she's doing. And her
fans will realize this, of course.
"Not to be missed" just about sums it up. As Will Rogers might have said, "I never read a Grimes I
didn't like." "The Blue Last" holds its own, clearly, in the pantheon of the other 16 Jury books.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Dismal Grimes book
Review: Where does one begin? The last few Grimes books have lacked style, wit and cohesivieness. She does appear to have tired of the characters and of creating an absorbing plot. The plot for The Blue Last is very thin and the book is actually boring in some spots. Too many unanswered questions and once again we have the stock-in-trade children, only this time Gemma is a real mystery. I stopped "buying" the hard cover books a few books ago and after reading some of the reviews decided that I would check it out from the library. I'm glad I did because this book is not worth the price. What happened to Martha Grimes? I loved her books and enjoyed the characters even though Melrose and Jury annoyed me by conducting their love lives and romances without benefit of brain. Much like Julia Roberts. I am not saying I won't ever read another Richard Jury book, but I won't pay for it!
Rating: 
Summary: A letdown after "Jerusalem Inn"
Review: My escape from the horror of 9/11 was turning each night to "Jerusalem Inn," which begins so evocatively and envelopes the reader in the more confident, less scandal-ridden, less Americanized England of 20 years ago. Once finished, I immediately bought "The Blue Last." It's still a fairly comfortable escape -- and topical too, dealing as it does with the London blitz -- but the motivations for Richard Jury's latest investigation, along with the Melrose Plant subplot, are such non-starters that one impatiently begins to wonder whether the principals simply have too much idle time on their hands.
Rating:
Summary: Where was the Editor?
Review: Perhaps a writer as popular as Martha Grimes feels that she does not need an editor but this book proves her wrong. Aside from the typos, which calls for a proofreader, there are many inconsistencies and mistakes. She describes the exterior of a war time pub in London as being decorated with Christmas lights, hardly possible in a city that had gone through the Blitz. A few pages later her character remaks on the problem of traveling at night in London in utter darkness. I quess they turned off the Christmas lights. Jury's cousin is described as being in her 60's and then asks him if he has seen the baby! Whose baby? Certainly not her's. These are just sloppy errors. I leave a discussion of the plot itself to others.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as bad as reviewers says
Review: While this is more of the same but at the same time not enough, it is a pretty good book. (I think she's getting tired of writing this series or burned out, take your pick.) As for the reader who had it figured out by pg. 80, well...the only clue was pretty thin. And yes, it seems as if the characters in Long Pidd were just sort of thrown in at the last minute to provide some comic relief. It is more satisfying, however, to actually have murder take place in a big city (London) as opposed to having the corpses littering the countryside where normally, murder is a pretty rare happening. If you are a dyed-in-the-wool Jury fan, this one is pretty good. If you are just beginning the series, I would highly recommend reading the books in order. The "getting" to this one is a pretty fine journey. And I wholeheartedly agree with the other reader about Elizabeth George's Lynley series--excellent. And Peter Robinson's Banks series is another fine one with excellent writing and believable characters. Also try Jill McGown's and Deborah Crombie's series. They are also very fine.
Rating:
Summary: A Jury book is always fun to read
Review: Detective Chief Inspector Mickey Haggerty is dying from cancer and his work to complete his final case borders on obsession. Mickey begs his long time friend and fellow cop Richard Jury to take over the investigation because he knows Rich will not rest until he solves the investigation. Two skeletons were found amidst the ruins of THE BLUE LAST Pub. Forensics proves that the remains are that of a young woman and female infant killed during World War II.
Haggerty believes that the adult is Alexandra Tynedale, daughter of brewing magnate Oliver Tynedale. However, it is the infant that interests the dying cop. If she is who he thinks she is, then someone planted an impostor baby inside the Tynedale family and that child, now an adult, stands to inherit a fortune as the grandchild of a wealthy man. Though he wants nothing to remind him of the WW II bombings since his parents were killed by them, Rich begins to investigate for a friend. When a murder of a Tynedale friend occurs, Richard wonders if there is a tie to a cover-up of a five-decade-old scam or is Maisie really a Tynedale?
Richard Jury is always welcome and his latest tale includes a strong dose of his personal side through Haggerty and his thoughts about his deceased parents. The moving story line centers on the police investigation from a possible mystery over fifty years old; if there really is a mystery. Richard remains his irascible but lovable self in his sixteenth appearance and his creator, Martha Grimes, still has the magic touch to keep him fascinating. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: The Bue Last
Review: Felt that compared to Martha Grimes's previous stories, this one was disjointed. Too many story lines going on at once, and hard to relate one to the other. Anyone who had not read her previous books featuring Jury would have no idea who some of the characters mentioned were. The ending was strange to say the least and left more questions, in my case unanswered than answered.
Marianne D. Pender
Rating:
Summary: Grimes's "Last" is not her best
Review: Like others who have loved and cared enough about Martha Grimes's Richard Jury series to review the books here, I have been a fan from the beginning. But I have found in recent years that she has apparently grown tired of her characters, and that's contagious. I don't really care about them anymore either (except for Jury), and that's because she doesn't bother to make the reader care. In "The Blue Last," Jury is still a strong presence, but he has apparently become stupid. From the beginning, the plot presents glaringly obviously questions that he never thinks to ask. Part of this failure on his part is addressed briefly at the end, but the explanation is thin. If he had been the Jury we all know and love, he would have guessed the murderer as early on as I and others did. Moreover, many plot elements make no sense. For example, how could two intact skeletons remain undiscovered at a bomb site for 50 years when it was known that the two people were in the building at the time of the bombing? Wouldn't the family have made every effort to excavate the site at the time to find the bodies and bury them? (The recent disaster at the World Trade Center demonstrates compellingly the basic human need to have the body for closure and burial.) I won't go on with the many more plot flaws, for fear of giving away too much. Suffice it to say that they are numerous, full of loose ends that go nowhere (e.g., the stories of the two women's husbands, which raise questions, never answered, about what happened), plus a subplot that bogs down the book, is very tenuously and artificially connected to the main plot, and is disappointingly unwitty considering that it involves the usually very witty Melrose Plant and Marshall Trueblood. To add insult to injury, there were a number of typos in the book, and a couple of glaring misspellings of Italian words (where was the editor?). On the plus side, the plot does maintain one's interest in spite of the annoyances, the two children and the dog are beautifully drawn (even if we've seen the likes of them before), Jury is Jury (if blinder than usual), and the ending is shocking, if ambiguous. If Grimes plans to continue the series (and in spite of my disappointment, I hope she does), she would do well to alter its focus, as Elizabeth George did in this year's "A Traitor to Memory," which, after everyone got tired of Lynley and his loves, brought non-series characters to the forefront and demonstrated a deep understanding of complex psychological drama.
Rating:
Summary: Can't wait for the next Jury book!
Review: I thought that this book was excellent, as I would expect from this author. I don't understand what some other reviewers found so disappointing. All of the characters are familiar and enjoyable. I was completely surprised to discover who the killer was, I didn't see it coming at all. And, although the ending was a cliffhanger, I did not find that objectionable. I certainly hope that Ms. Grimes is well on her way to completely the next Jury book so I can find out what happens next!
Rating:
Summary: Where is the last chapter?
Review: Where is the last chapter to this book? What has happened to Martha Grimes? She hasn't told us the end of the story. Who is Gemma? Where did she come from? What happened to Melrose Plant?
Is Jury dead? At this point do I, or any other reader who has followed this series for a good number of years, care? If this author has decided to become cutesy...did I hear the name Elizabeth George echo???...she should have told us/me before I paid Amazon's price for this hardcover edition. Oh, no...not again....What is the old saying, "Once burned....," or perhaps "I haven't bought the Brooklyn Bridge in the last 10 years either." No more Martha...Is Martha living??? Perhaps the publishing company could not pay for the final chapter of the book?" Whatever, I, the reader, feel cheated. And the customer is always right, Martha!
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