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Loading... The Dirty Duck (original 1984; edition 2004)by Martha Grimes
Work InformationThe Dirty Duck by Martha Grimes (1984)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Big disappointment. Farfetched solution. The Dirty Duck is a famous pub in Stratford and the story centers around American tourists visiting there. The story starts with a missing boy, from a large family, and then the murders begin. The characters were caricatures of rich southerners and stuffy British snobs. It also was very dated with the Concord jet flying in 4 hrs back and forth. ( ) Superintendent Richard Jury is in Stratford-on-Avon on some regular police business. He’s given a call to Melrose Plant to come meet up. Plant has taken Jury up on the invite to visit and has also come to Stratford to avoid the “American cousins” from Milwaukee descending on Ardly End. Aunt Agatha, Plant’s American aunt-by-marriage, had hopes of impressing her American cousins with Plant’s titles and wealth. A visit to Stratford in the middle of tourist season was the only way Plant could avoid the invasion. Instead of taking in a few of the nightly Shakespeare performances, the two men find themselves dealing with a missing boy and then three slash murders. The people involved are all from the same tour group. Three are from the same family. The murders are quite violent and at each one two lines from an Elizabethan poem are found. How do these poetic quotes tie to each death and to each other? The murder victims are all women. How does the missing boy play in and will he be found violently murdered also? Grimes writes a good mystery that I find I can get into and escape in. I was not disappointed with this one. Martha Grimes tells an interesting story like Louise Penny. Both writers employ writers from the past as part of the story. And both writers delve into setting and characters and steer clear of rambling dialogue. In The Dirty Duck, Grimes sets her sights on Shakespeare’s, As You Like It, and the writer Christopher Marlowe. What an adventure as the reader learns more about Shakespeare and Marlowe and the political world of writers in merry olde England. Grimes presents history and literature as delightful tales in her mystery of murder and mayhem which Richard Jury and Melrose Plant must solve. The list of characters and old favorites dance among the pages and even Vivian and Aunt Agatha appear. A young boy disappears, and his stepmother and stepsister meet with danger. Is this one family the target of misfortune? I love the story and the familiar articles such as Melrose drinking Old Peculiar ale and Agatha eating everything. no reviews | add a review
Fiction.
Mystery.
Suspense.
HTML:The Dirty Duck is a pub in Shakespeare's beloved Stratford, and in this pub Miss Gwendolyn Bracegirdle of Sarasota, Florida, fresh from a performance of As You Like It, takes her last drink. A few minutes later she is slashed ear to ear, the only clue: two lines from an unknown poem printed across a theater program. The razor-happy murderer, it seems is stalking a group of rich American tourists. And Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury, just passing through Stratford for a glimpse of the intriguing Lady Kennington, instead takes a crash course in the bloodier side of Elizabethan verse. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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