Below is the complete list of Martha Grimes books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Richard Jury Books
Publication Order of Emma Graham Books
Publication Order of Andi Oliver Books
Publication Order of Foul Matter Books
Publication Order of Standalone Novels Books
Publication Order of Short Story Collections Books
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
About Martha Grimes
Martha Grimes is an American mystery writer best known for the Richard Jury series, a long-running set of detective novels that brought a distinctly American author into the tradition of British village and pub mysteries. Born in Pittsburgh in 1931, Grimes built a career around atmosphere, wit, eccentric characters, and crimes that often unfold in places with names as memorable as the people who inhabit them. Her work is usually associated with classic detective fiction, but her best books are not simple puzzles. They mix melancholy, comedy, social observation, literary playfulness, and a sharp sense of human loneliness.
Grimes studied at the University of Maryland and the University of Iowa, and she later taught at institutions including the University of Iowa, Frostburg State University, and Montgomery College. Before becoming widely known as a novelist, she developed the literary background that would shape much of her fiction. Her mysteries often show a strong interest in language, mood, setting, and character psychology, not merely clue-gathering. Even when the structure is recognizably traditional, the tone is often darker, stranger, and more emotionally textured than a standard cozy mystery.
Her breakthrough came with The Man with a Load of Mischief, published in 1981, the first novel featuring Scotland Yard detective Richard Jury and Melrose Plant, a wealthy aristocrat who has given up his title. The series’ titles are famously drawn from pub names, a device that gives the books a strong sense of English atmosphere. Jury is thoughtful, restrained, and quietly compassionate, while Melrose Plant brings intelligence, irony, and an outsider’s detachment from the aristocratic world he was born into. Their partnership gives the series its unusual balance: police investigation on one side, amateur insight and social comedy on the other.
The Richard Jury books became Grimes’s signature achievement, with titles such as The Old Fox Deceiv’d, The Anodyne Necklace, Jerusalem Inn, The Old Silent, The Blue Last, and The Knowledge expanding the world across decades. The series is not only about murder; it is about villages, memory, old injuries, class habits, damaged children, lonely adults, and the odd ways people perform respectability while hiding grief or guilt. Grimes’s mysteries can be witty and playful, but they often carry a mournful undercurrent.
Outside Richard Jury, Grimes wrote the Emma Graham series, beginning with Hotel Paradise. These books are set in a decaying resort atmosphere inspired in part by Grimes’s childhood summers around a hotel in western Maryland. Emma is a young narrator with a fierce curiosity, and the books are slower, more haunting, and more memory-driven than the Jury novels. Cold Flat Junction, Belle Ruin, and Fadeaway Girl continue that mood, creating a coming-of-age mystery world shaped by family secrets, vanished people, and the strange persistence of the past.
Grimes also wrote the Andi Oliver books, beginning with Biting the Moon, as well as standalone and related novels such as Foul Matter and The Way of All Fish, which turn toward the publishing world with satirical bite. Her range is broader than one detective series, though Richard Jury remains the central pillar of her bibliography.
Martha Grimes’s fiction endures because it respects mystery tradition while refusing to make murder neat. Her books are atmospheric, literate, sometimes funny, often sad, and filled with people who seem eccentric until their pain comes into focus. At her best, Grimes turns the detective novel into a study of place, memory, and the hidden lives behind ordinary doors.