I’ve read every book Martha Grimes has ever written and the Richard Jury series has been one of my favorite series since the 1980s when she first started writing them. I still own all her work and she has always been an “auto buy” for me.

I never, ever thought I’d say this about one of her books, but this one should never have been written, much less published. It was only about 250 pages in total. Probably about 180 of them were filler and nonsensical. It would have been a great short story if the murder part of the plot had been distilled to its essence and published that way.

I love the recurring characters of the series, but the whole subplot with Sgt. Wiggins and Brian Macalvie was a distraction that served no purpose other than to add word count and pages to the book. The promise in the blurb that it would tie into Jury’s investigation went nowhere and there was no reason to have this whole road trip escapade in the book.

Melrose Plant served no purpose other than to eat and drink in his club with Jury. Even his “job” working at the victim’s stables offered no clues to solving the mystery like they usually do.

There was a chapter about pigs that was absolutely ludicrous as well as a visit to the characters of Plant’s home town that basically only served to remind us of all the quirky people who live in the village.

Jury also popped into several pubs where he’d solved crimes in recent books and we got to see him interact with bartenders in those places.

In short, this seemed like a goodbye “tour” of the series. If I’d known that, I might not have spent $28.00 on a short story with a lot of filler and nonsense woven in. This sort of makes me livid. I get that the author is now 95, but maybe she should have stopped with the book before this one rather than leave us long term fans with such a bitter taste in our mouths.