The Winds of Change
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Manufacturer: Signet
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780451216960
ISBN: 0451216962
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2005-11-01
Publisher: Signet
Studio: Signet
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Editorial Reviews:
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Richard Jury embarks on the darkest investigation of his career when the dead body of a young London girl leads to the cold case of a missing girl in Launceston-an unsolved mystery that has haunted Police Officer Brian Macalvie for years.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: extremely disappointing
Comment: Such a disjointed novel that I don't know where to begin with what is wrong.
I know that child abductions are not rare but to have 4 different characters with an abducted or murdered girl child in their past is a bit too much for belief isn't it? I mean England is not that populous and filled with perverts.
All I can hope is that this is an errant Jury mystery and that better will come my way. BTW is it just me or does it seem that Melrose Plant and Jury are essentially the same person with different names. And that last chapter was absolutely superflous and pointless. I kept thinking it was the lead-off chapter to the next book and actually looked to see if that was so because it made no sense in the context of the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: JOINING THE PARTY
Comment: This recent Inspector Jury novel by Martha Grimes will have readers in two categories, those who know the series already and newcomers to it like myself. I find that I take to the style, and I suppose the best commendation I can offer is that this story has interested me enough to go back to the start of the series and get to know Jury and his associates. The author does not do much to introduce them to first-time readers by this stage of the game, the cast of new characters is quite large and I was constantly having to flip back a few pages to remind myself who was who, and Grimes shows awareness of this matter on p217 with a quiet and wryly humorous reference to the 87th Precinct series in which readers are likely to experience the same problem.
Ms Grimes is apparently American, and her command of the idiom of British crime-writing is impressive. Slip-ups are few and minor. In Britain we write `ploughed' and not `plowed', we do not refer to a cell-phone but to a mobile, and it should hardly even have needed a glance at a map to tell one of her characters that Kirkcudbright (so spelt) is unsurprisingly in Kirkcudbrightshire and not in Dumfriesshire. The style of crime novels and TV detective series in Britain has come on a bit since the palmy days of Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey. I could not imagine Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and the rest of them going anywhere near the topic of paederasty that features strongly in The Winds of Change - even Chandler would never have touched such a theme - but I recall it from the TV series A Touch of Frost. Detective inspectors with cultivated tastes are also now familiar from Inspector Morse, Jury and his friends give a good deal of prominence to Henry James, and I will be surprised if both of these series have not influenced Ms Grimes to some extent. Influences are perfectly legitimate and to be expected, but Grimes has the first quality that I look for in any novelist, namely a distinctive tone of her own. This is rather understated, in what is sometimes thought to be a particularly British way. Two people are found murdered near the beginning of this story, but the scenes are described with detachment. Indeed even the more sordid aspects to the narrative are treated with that, and this way of doing it is definitely to my own liking.
There is not a lot of `action' in the ordinary sense (shooting and whatnot) until near the end. The main focus is on the detectives as people, and they spend most of their time talking, and not talking exclusively about their investigations. The actual plot-line is not, I must say, my idea of the strongest I ever came across. It depends heavily on not one case but two of mistaken or unperceived identity which seemed to me approximately as convincing as those in Cosi Fan Tutte or Twelfth Night. However I finished the book with a reasonably strong idea of the more important identities of Jury, Cody and the others who are presumably delineated clearly for beginners in the earlier novels. To that extent, Ms Grimes has got herself one genuinely interested new reader who is likely to pursue his new interest, and I don't suppose I can say fairer than that.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What Child Is This?
Comment: I've avoided the last few Richard Drury mysteries because Martha Grimes loves to finish on a depressing note and I haven't been much in the mood for that recently -- I think I'm getting soft. But, without doubt Grimes is one of the finest detective story writers working today, so it is inevitable that I would eventually put aside my finicky attitude and read another one. I chose the Winds of Charge to start off, and what a lucky choice it was.
The story starts with a child shot dead in a London street. The prose of this opening section, centered on the lonely body and Jury's conversation with the pathologist is unnervingly poetic and even when Grimes returns to her normal writing style the images of this opening scene stay with you throughout as each character enters, plays their part and displays their own haunting wounds. The second murder is at the mansion of Angel Gate in Cornwall, Brian McAlvie's territory, where a few years ago another child disappeared and her mother dies not long after. Now a nameless corpse follows and the two mysteries, the two unknown dead, seem related somehow.
Related in part by the dark shadow of a child abuser who, thanks to his wealth, has been able to operate just beyond the reach of Scotland Yard. Piece by piece, aided by Sergeant Wiggens, Jury assembles a story which yields glimpses of a tragedy that may very well surpass Jury's own abilities to cope. This is a very dark tale indeed, and underneath the set piece humor of Wiggens' strange health habits and Plant's inept efforts at being a consulting gardener are the people who think that children are a commodity and that what they do to them is a form of love.
My hat is off to Grimes for managing to do all this without getting lost in unnerving, gritty details. There is a time for that, as Andrew Vachss has demonstrated, but Grimes chooses a more urban style that gets the point across without destroying the nerves of the reader. This is an altogether satisfying read, with some hints that there may be more to follow. If there is, I'll be in line to read it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Better than Old Wine Shades, but it helps if you have read others in the series
Comment: Richard Jury is definitely a too-good-to-be-true character, but no less likeable for that. There is great humor and dry wit scattered among the personal tragedies of various characters, including the investigating police and the victims/suspects in crimes. I liked this one better than her more recent Old Wine Shades because of Jury's introspection and Melrose's difficulties with gardening and children. I recommend this one to anyone who has read other books in the series, so that you're already familiar with the main characters and typical situations they find themselves in, and so that you can appreciate the references to characters who usually appear in the Jury novels but are met here only as 'off-camera' asides.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Comment: I have to come to the defense of Martha Grimes on this book in view of the many detractors. Having read all of her Richard Jury mysteries I was glad to see a new one after what seemed like a long time. Jury is , of course up to his usual dark gloomy, melancholy ruminations, but, that is to be expected. It is for the excellent plots and characterization of others in the story that keeps me coming back and in this book, Grimes has not let me down. Tho a little short on the Long Pid menagerie's appearance (Plant excepted) her portrayal of the adult interactions with children is superb! Loved every line of it and as a Grandpa I can attest to it's accuracy and entertainment value.
Though dark in subject matter the outcome was especially satisfying and Jury's actions and "detecting" were again suberb. Contrary to some of Grime's Jury novels, this one left me feeling satisfied at the end
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