The Old Silent Author:Martha Grimes In the tenth murderous case for Richard Jury, the New Scotland Yard superintendent witnesses a killing in a West Yorkshire inn called the Old Silent, while his highborn, amateur colleague, Melrose Plant, wishes he could perform one as he drives his impossible aunt Agathe to the Old Swan in Harrogate. The regulars return: Sergeant Wiggins (nostr... more »ums in hand); Jury's nemesis, Racer; and Racer's own nemesis -- that cat Cyril.
Caught up in a triple murder, Jury would go to any lengths to help Nell Healey, the lovely widow of one of the victims. But Nell Healey remains silent as the Yorkshire moors, quiet as the grave, while the scope of the mystery widens.
. . . In Yorkshire: the residents of Weavers Hall -- an elderly Italian princess, who loves to talk about Major Poges's "kill-to-cartridge ratio"; Ramona Braine, mildly psychic (or psychotic), and her son, the Beastly Boy; Ellen Taylor, a leather-clad, chain-smoking American novelist who is "hot, very hot in New York" ("New Yawk"); Abby Cable, who escapes the lunacy of the Hall by living in the barn with her sheepdog, Stranger, and who drags Melrose Plant along on a sheep-saving expedition; and,above all, the eloquently silent Nell Healey.« less