The Deer Leap Author:Martha Grimes In her latest Richard Jury adventure, Martha Grimes takes us to Ashdown Dean, a little English village where animals are dying in a series of seeningly innocuous accidents. While the puzzling deaths of village pets may raise some idle gossip over a pint or two at The Deer Leap, the village pub, this hardly seems a case for Superintendent Jury o... more »f Scotland Yard. Nor does it seem much of a challenge for the combined deductive powers of Jury and Melrose Plant the affable Earl of Caverness.
It his mystery writing, amethyst-eyed friend Polly Praed, who drags Plant and Jury to Ashdown Dean. The impatient Polly, having yanked open a call-box in the pouring rain is ill prepared for what lands at her feet. The now-deadly case is calling for Scotland Yard. But Ashdown Dean presents a puzzle. Just outside the village lurks the solitary and sinister Rumford Laboratory. What role does it play in the deaths of pets and people? And what secrets lie buried in the cloudy past of Regina de la Notre, the aging dowager and village matriarch? And just who is Regina's fifteen-year-old irrespressible ward, who uses the gardens of the ramshackle manshion called La Notre to tend lame and helpless strays? The answers lie hidden beneath Ashdown Dean's sleepy veneer. And Jury's efforts lead him to an ending more chilling than the most worl-weary of detectives could imagine.« less