Reading Order
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Start with The Man With a Load of Mischief and continue through all 26 books in the listed reading order.
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Start with The Man With a Load of Mischief
Book 1 by Martha Grimes • Published 1981
In the village of Long Piddleton, two strangers are murdered in spectacular fashion at neighboring pubs, one wedged into a beer cask and one swinging from a sign. Scotland Yard inspector Richard Jury and aristocrat Me...
Complete List
Richard Jury reading order
Ends with The Red Queen
- 1
Book 1:The Man With a Load of Mischief
Martha Grimes • 1981
In the village of Long Piddleton, two strangers are murdered in spectacular fashion at neighboring pubs, one wedged into a beer cask and one swinging from a sign. Scotland Yard inspector Richard Jury and aristocrat Me...
- 2
Book 2:The Old Fox Deceiv'd
Martha Grimes • 1982
A woman in theatrical costume is stabbed on a foggy Twelfth Night in a Yorkshire fishing village, and no one is sure who she really is. Richard Jury must untangle a family’s buried scandals to learn why someone wanted...
- 3
Book 3:The Anodyne Necklace
Martha Grimes • 1983
A severed finger found near the village of Littlebourne pulls Richard Jury into a case linking a baffling local murder, a London street attack, and a rumored treasure. Gossip in the pub called the Anodyne Necklace slo...
- 4
Book 4:The Dirty Duck
Martha Grimes • 1984
During the theater season in Stratford upon Avon, a member of a tour group is found murdered near the pub called the Dirty Duck. Richard Jury must look past staged deaths and Shakespearean drama to find a killer hidin...
- 5
Book 5:Jerusalem Inn
Martha Grimes • 1984
Trapped by snow in the days before Christmas, Richard Jury meets a woman in a graveyard who is soon found dead. At a nearby country house, Melrose Plant discovers another body, and the remote Jerusalem Inn becomes the...
- 6
Book 6:Help the Poor Struggler
Martha Grimes • 1985
Around bleak Dartmoor, three children have been killed, and fears rise that a predator is still at work. From the lonely pub Help the Poor Struggler to a moorland estate with an orphaned heiress, Jury and Brian Macalv...
- 7
Book 7:The Deer Leap
Martha Grimes • 1985
In Ashdown Dean, a rash of suspicious pet deaths seems like small town gossip until violence strikes a young woman. Called in to assist, Jury and Melrose Plant follow the trail to a guarded teenager and a hidden refug...
- 8
Book 8:I Am the Only Running Footman
Martha Grimes • 1986
When two women are strangled a year apart, one on a lonely Devon road and one outside a Mayfair pub named I Am the Only Running Footman, Richard Jury joins Brian Macalvie to hunt a clever killer who understands family...
- 9
Book 9:The Five Bells and Bladebone
Martha Grimes • 1987
A dismembered corpse tumbles from a newly delivered antique desk in Long Piddleton, turning village gossip into horror. Jury’s search leads from a country estate to London’s riverside slums, where the dead man’s doubl...
- 10
Book 10:The Old Silent
Martha Grimes • 1989
On a bleak holiday in Yorkshire, Richard Jury watches a woman calmly shoot her husband in the lounge of the Old Silent inn. Determined to understand why, he follows her silence into a tangle of past kidnappings, famil...
- 11
Book 11:The Old Contemptibles
Martha Grimes • 1991
After a brief, troubled affair, the widow Jane Holdsworth is found dead and Richard Jury himself is treated as a suspect. Confined to London, he sends Melrose Plant to the Lake District to pose as a librarian and pry...
- 12
Book 12:The Horse You Came In On
Martha Grimes • 1993
When a bar patron is murdered in Baltimore, local police turn to Richard Jury for help. With Melrose Plant and Sergeant Wiggins in tow, Jury wades into a harbor full of eccentrics, following clues that circle back to...
- 13
Book 13:Rainbow's End
Martha Grimes • 1995
Three women in England die of apparently natural causes, but the pattern bothers Richard Jury. The trail takes him to Santa Fe, where a guarded thirteen year old girl and her pet coyote hold pieces of a puzzle that st...
- 14
Book 14:The Case Has Altered
Martha Grimes • 1997
In the lonely Lincolnshire fens, two women linked to a remote estate are found dead, and the main suspect is Jenny Kennington, a woman Jury has never stopped caring about. To clear her name, he sends Melrose Plant in...
- 15
Book 15:The Stargazey
Martha Grimes • 1998
On a bleak November night, Richard Jury notices a luminous blonde in a fur coat hopping on and off a bus outside the Stargazey pub, then vanishing through the gates of Fulham Palace. When a lookalike turns up murdered...
- 16
Book 16:The Lamorna Wink
Martha Grimes • 1999
Melrose Plant rents a seaside house in Cornwall where two children once drowned on the stone steps. When their guardian disappears and another woman is found dead near the cove, Plant draws in Richard Jury and Brian M...
- 17
Book 17:The Blue Last
Martha Grimes • 2001
At London’s last untouched bombsite, workers uncover the remains of a young mother and child from the Blitz, raising doubts about which infant really survived. As Richard Jury investigates, a modern City broker connec...
- 18
Book 18:The Grave Maurice
Martha Grimes • 2002
Still recovering from a near fatal shooting, Jury is drawn into the case of Nell Ryder, a teenager who vanished from her family’s stud farm along with a prized horse. At the pub called The Grave Maurice, evidence of i...
- 19
Book 19:The Winds of Change
Martha Grimes • 2004
The shooting of an unidentified five year old girl on a shabby London street propels Jury into one of his bleakest cases, involving a child abuse ring, a financier with a poisonous past, and an earlier abduction tied...
- 20
Book 20:The Old Wine Shades
Martha Grimes • 2006
In a London wine bar, a stranger named Harry Johnson tells Jury an extraordinary story about a physicist whose wife, child, and dog vanished during a house hunting trip. Only the dog came back. As Jury checks the tale...
- 21
Book 21:Dust
Martha Grimes • 2007
When charming bachelor Billy Maples is found murdered after a night at an exclusive club called Dust, Richard Jury must sort through the victim’s double life in the art world. With Melrose Plant installed at Henry Jam...
- 22
Book 22:The Black Cat
Martha Grimes • 2010
A young woman is shot behind a country pub known as the Black Cat, dressed in couture clothes that do not fit her quiet village life. As more escorts are killed, Jury works to reconcile her identities as shy librarian...
- 23
Book 23:Vertigo 42
Martha Grimes • 2014
At a bar perched high above London, Tom Williamson asks Jury to re examine the long ago death of his wife, believed to have fallen down the stairs during a vertigo attack. Linked deaths of a child and a mysterious wom...
- 24
Book 24:The Knowledge
Martha Grimes • 2018 • 2 recommendations
A gunman kills an American couple outside the Artemis Club, then calmly commandeers a black cab and vanishes toward Heathrow. London taxi drivers, a fearless ten year old girl, and Richard Jury all join forces as the...
- 25
Book 25:The Old Success
Martha Grimes • 2019
After a French tourist’s body washes ashore on a Cornish island, two more baffling murders follow, one on a Midlands estate and one in Exeter Cathedral. Jury teams up with Brian Macalvie and legendary retired detectiv...
- 26
Book 26:The Red Queen
Matt Ridley • 5 recommendations
Use the reading order above to move through the series in the intended sequence.
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Richard Jury FAQ
What is the best order to read the Richard Jury series?
The recommended reading order is the numbered order shown on this page, starting with The Man With a Load of Mischief.
How many books are in the Richard Jury series?
There are 26 books currently listed in the Richard Jury series on GurusReads.
Where should I start with the Richard Jury series?
New readers should start with The Man With a Load of Mischief, the first book in the reading order.
Is the Richard Jury series complete?
Based on the publication years we have, the series appears likely complete and spans releases from 1981 to 2019.