She Treads Softly: The Red Queen

Monday, June 16, 2025

The Red Queen

The Red Queen by Martha Grimes
7/1/25; 256 pages
Grove Atlantic
Richard Jury #26

The Red Queen by Martha Grimes is a recommended procedural and humorous cozy mystery. This is the twenty-sixth novel in the series featuring superintendent Richard Jury. It may be best appreciated by those who have been following the series and intimately know all the characters. Many of them are present, including Melrose Plant.

Jury and Wiggins of New Scotland Yard are asked to investigate when businessman Tom Treadnor is shot through the window at The Queen pub in Twickenham. No one saw who did it and Treadnor doesn't appear to be well liked, including by Alice, his wife. He was planning to divorce her. At the same time Jury sees a photo in the newspaper of a man who is the doppelgänger of Treadnor. The man is traveling in the USA and unable to be located.

Another case involves Wiggins, Jury’s partner at New Scotland Yard. His missing sister sent a postcard to their mother and Wiggins takes off with Macalvie to find her. The two follow various clues to find her. Eventually the two investigations begin to converge. There is also an incident with a goat and some pigs.

This is a short, fast-paced novel that can be quickly read. Along the way there are some delightful scenes and humorous encounters. This doesn't represent the best novels in the series. It doesn't have the suspense or complexity of earlier novels. The investigation seems lackluster and was easily predicted. However, Grimes is in her nineties now so another Richard Jury novel is a feat in itself.

The Red Queen is a great choice for those who have been following the Richard Jury series. Thanks to Grove Atlantic for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.