Martha Grimes, Dust

Dust

Martha Grimes

Viking, Jan 2007, $25.95

ISBN: 0670037869

In Clerkenwell, England, though he is only thirteen years old, Benny Keegan looks much older so is able obtain work as a helper in the kitchen of Zetter's restaurant, a place with rooms. Waiter Gilbert Snow asks Benny to deliver a meal to the room of Billy Maples, but the young teen finds a corpse in the room. Benny immediately calls his friend, Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury.

Islington Inspector Lu Aguilar leads the investigation into the room service homicide, but Richard forces his way on the case especially since he plans to sleep with her. Both have no problem in bed, but struggle to find a motive for murder because Billy seemed to have no enemies and though wealthy, the inheritance went to his even more affluent father. With the assistance of his pal Melrose Plant, Richard tries to figure out who killed the lover of William James' novels only to find ties between friends and family to a WWI atrocity that still fails to explain why Billy was killed.

In his twentieth-plus appearance, Jury is at his best as he investigates the homicide in which leads prove false and he slowly peels away the mendicant masks of those close to the victim; even more interesting is his attraction to Lu. Readers will appreciate his inquiries as he digs deeper into what the family and friends try to conceal from him. The whodunit leaves the romance in the DUST as this is a strong police procedural.

Harriet Klausner