As he leans over the body of an unidentified five-year-old girl shot in the back on a shabby London street, Superintendent Richard Jury knows he'll be facing one of the saddest investigations of his life. His colleague DI Johnny Blakeley, head of the pedophile unit of NSY, thinks he knows where this child came from—an iniquitous house on that same street, owned by well-known financier Viktor Baumann and fronted by a woman named Murchison. Blakeley has been trying to wreck their operation for a long time.
While examining the body of an unidentified woman murdered in the gardens of Declan Scott's estate, Angel Gate, Brian Macalvie, commander of the Devon and Cornwall police, realizes he's been here before. Three years prior, Declan's stepdaughter, four- year-old Flora, was abducted while she and her mother Mary were visiting the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Shortly after that, Mary Scott herself died, and Declan was devastated by the loss of his child and his wife.
"He really doesn't need a body in his garden," says Macalvie.
Joined by the intrepid Melrose Plant, now a gardener at Angel Gate, Jury and Macalvie rake over the present and the past in a pub near Launceston called the Winds of Change. With one of their most serpentine investigations under way, all signs point to the guilt of Viktor Baumann, Mary Scott's first husband and Flora's father. But when no one in this case is exactly who he seems, how can Jury be sure?
Why have I ignored Martha Grimes and her absolute stunning alter ego Richard Jury? I was hooked by the calm protagonist who works for Scotland Yard and will have to catch up on the 18 other novels she created to feature this detective. The Winds of Change is a crime story within another story of illusion. While investigating the shooting of a very young girl on the streets of London, Jury goes to the countryside of Cornwall to investigate the disappearance of another young girl, only the trail to this one is stone cold, over four years cold. The story weaves both investigations into a tightly played story, filled with richly developed characters, most of whom are not what they seem.