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The Old Wine Shades (Richard Jury, Bk 20)
The Old Wine Shades - Richard Jury, Bk 20 Author:Martha Grimes "The dog came back." — "This is a joke, right?" — "No, it isn't . . . So do you want to hear the rest of it?" Dumbly, Jury nodded. — The rest of it is told by Harry Johnson, a stranger who sits down next to Richard Jury as he's drinking in a London pub called the Old Wine Shades. Over three successive nights Harry spins this complicated story about... more » a good friend of his whose wife and son (and dog) disappeared one day as they were viewing property in Surrey. They?ve been missing for nine months -- no trace, no clue, no lead as to what happened.
He's a fascinating bloke, this Harry Johnson -- rich, handsome, unattached, and brainy about the esoteric subject of quantum mechanics, a field in which the vanished woman's husband, Hugh Gault, excels: He's an authority on string theory, which has some pretty funny notions about the nature of reality.
Jury wonders, Is Harry Johnson winding him up? Or did it really happen? The dog did come back?but how? And from where? And when Jury investigates, all seems to be just as Harry described it.
If you like the Richard Jury series and gang, you'll like this one. It starts with a man telling Jury a story about a wife, child and dog disappearing -- and only the DOG returns!
#20 Chief Supt. Richard Jury mystery set in the UK. This story sucked me in right from the beginning, with a man in a pub telling Jury a story about his friend whose wife, autistic son and dog disappeared into thin air about nine months previously. They had made a trip to a small town in Surrey that had a good private school for autistic children, and where they hoped to move if things checked out well.
While she looked at one cottage she was scheduled to view, the estate agent stated she'd never come back to return the key for the second one, which was an unoccupied estate with a spooky history. "But the dog came back," Harry Johnson says, and produces a shaggy mutt called Mungo. Jury, on administrative leave from Scotland Yard, spends several pleasant evenings talking with Harry explaining about his friend Hugh, who became so distraught at his wife's disappearance that he is now in a private psychiatric facility attempting to gain his equilibrium back.
Jury quietly (and unofficially) investigates, and of course brings his friend Melrose Plant into things as well. All went relatively well until the ending, which I found to be anticlimactic and rather lame--and I did see the plot twist coming. But still, I enjoy these visits with this set of characters that I have come to know and love over the years.
The latest Richard Jury book. It tries your patience at first with allusions to quantum physics and the story within a story format but about halfway through it I found it enjoyable as the others in the series.
