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    Help the Poor Struggler
    Help the Poor Struggler
    Help the Poor Struggler
    Audiobook6 hours

    Help the Poor Struggler

    Written by Martha Grimes

    Narrated by Steve West

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Around bleak Dartmoor, where the Hound of the Baskervilles once bayed, three children have been brutally murdered. Now Richard Jury of Scotland Yard joins forces with a hot-tempered local constable named Brian Macalvie to track down the killer. The trail begins at a desolate pub, Help the Poor Struggler. It leads straight to the estate of Lady Jessica, a ten-year-old orphaned heiress who lives with her mysterious uncle and ever-changing series of governesses. And as suspense spreads across the forbidding landscape, an old injustice returns to haunt Macalvie…with clues that link a murder in the distant past with a killing yet to come.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateAug 27, 2013
    ISBN9781442363144
    Author

    Martha Grimes

    Bestselling author Martha Grimes is the author of more than thirty books, including twenty-two Richard Jury mysteries. She is also the author of Double Double, a dual memoir of alcoholism written with her son. The winner of the 2012 Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award, Grimes lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

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    Reviews for Help the Poor Struggler

    4/5

    250 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Love this series, and the narrator even more. His myriad voices are so good I forget there is just one person narrating. It sounds like a whole cast of characters!
    • 4/5
      More child killings. She got on a real kick (later ones are even worse). I would have preferred more of the eccentric characters and less of the evil dark villains, and Jury's ill-fated non-romances with with victims/witnesses/suspects.
    • 5/5
      The setting — Dartmoor. The first death was a 12 year old boy whose body was found behind the Five Alls pub in Dorset. Next was the boy found in the church at Wynchcoombe. Then the girl at the beach in Lyme Regis. Is it a serial killer or?Jury is called out on the first case and the next two happen in such quick succession that he is onto those also. Jury finds himself working with Brian Macalvie, and outspoken, brash chief superintendent, who isn’t always well liked. Macalvie is a man who not only speaks his mind, he is also excellent at solving crimes — except for one and that one is an obsession to him. It was twenty years ago and Macalvie can’t let it go. He feels there may be a tie to the current murders and is determined to prove it.Macalvie takes a liking to Sargent Wiggins, Jury’s partner, and Jury finds himself able to do his own investigating on his own. Considering Wiggins is quite the hypochondriac, it is surprising Macalvie takes to him!As Jury investigates he does find that there are threads that tie to the various families, along with unearthing some secrets the families preferred to leave buried.This book kept my attention to the point I read it in two sittings.
    • 5/5
      murder-investigation, obsession, law-enforcement A tough read because children are being targeted. The usual characters are in place plus a new high ranking copper who is obsessed by a case he was on as a newish sgt and was positive that the wrong man was imprisoned. The case is convoluted enough to make everyone a little nutty, including the reader. I like the way the author's mind works. Steve West does a wonderful job.
    • 2/5
      I wasn't a fan. On the plus side, I did not guess all the plot intricacies until very near the end. On the negative side, it was annoyingly parochial, using abbreviations and slang that were not completely understandable and most characters not particularly well developed. (She tried with Jessie, and her uncle had real potential. I might read a book just about them if they were fleshed out.) If I was British perhaps I would find it just a cute little "insider" mystery and might be just as annoyed by some US mysteries, who knows?
    • 3/5
      Good characters, better writing than usual for her, bad plotting.
    • 5/5
      6th in the Richard Jury series.The book opens with a grisly murder committed 20 years previously in a small community, Clerihew Marsh, close to Dartmoor. A 5 year old girl, Teresa Mulvanney witnessed the murder, that of her mother, and had remarkable presence of mind to call for help. But waiting alone with the body and the horror, by the time the police arrived, her mind had retreated into mental darkness. A young medical student, Sam Waterman, was arrested and convicted for the crime, over the disbelieving protests of the then Detective Sergeant Brian Macalvie. Teresa's 15 year old sister Mary also refuses to believe that Sam is guilty; after confronting and berating Macalvie (a daunting task for even hardened adults) for not apprehending her mother's murderer, she disappears from the area.20 years later, 3 children in the general area are murdered, bringing Jury and Wiggens to the investigations. In Dorchester, Jury holds jurisdiction, but the other two occur within that of Devon-Cornwall, whose constabulary is headed by District Commander/Chief Superintendent Macalvie. Perfectly secure in his assumption of his godlike omniscience, the abrasive Macalvie strikes up an unlikely partnership with Wiggens, who acts as Macalvie's mobile pharmacy, supplying him with Fisherman's Friend cough drops.Meanwhile at Ashcroft, the family seat of Lady Jessica Mary Allan-Ashcroft, 10 year old heiress to multimillions and ward of her uncle, Robert Ashcroft, Jess is worried about what she views as the sudden, inexplicable disappearance of her Uncle Rob. More intelligent than just about everyone around her put together, Jess resorts to desperate measures to get someone to listen to her about her fears. Calling the emergency line, Jess reports the ax-murder of the Honorable Henry Allan-Ashcroft, in reality Henry, Jess' aging Shar-pei; Henry's only resemblance to a corpse is his ability to fall asleep in just about any circumstance.The call brings the Devon-Cornwall police--and later, Jury and Macalvie. Jury, convinced that Jess is in danger, enlists the aid of Melrose Plant; Jess' fascination with classic (expensive) cars gives the Earl of Caverness; Viscount of Nitherwold, Ross, and Cromarty; Baron Montardy and his Silver Ghost Rolls Royce a perfect cover to infiltrate Ashcroft and spy for Jury.Jury then enlists the aid of Molly Singer, an enigmatic resident of Lyme Regis who discovered the body of one of the murdered children and who is herself under suspicion by Macalvie; Molly, an accomplished professional photographer but with the crippling condition of agoraphobia, agrees to pose as a free lance photographer for the magazine Executive Cars, gain entrance to the estate, and take photos for possible identification.All this leads to the climax, which is one of the best Grimes has written, a real page-turner which has been absent from her mysteries until this book. The only strain in the story is the excuse to intrude Molly springer into Ashcroft, but that's minor.In a return to form, Grimes' characters are well-drawn and believable. Macalvie is a great addition, brilliant, dedicated, and thoroughly obnoxious. Freddie, the publican of Help the Poor Struggler is another eccentric. Jess is one of the best of Grimes' bright, resourceful, practical children; she's the focus of the plot and Grimes handles her magnificently. That this is my favorite Richard Jury mystery is due almost entirely to Jess.Grimesism: "She ran through governesses like a shark through a salmon-fall."Highly recommended.
    • 2/5
      This is a reissue from 1985 of the 6th, I believe, Richard Jury mystery. Jury teams up with local chief superintendant Brian Macalvie to solve the murders of three children that appear to be connected to another murder from the past.As you'd expect from a Richard Jury mystery, there are the usual cast of characters, and a precocious little girl, and lots of small-town British atmosphere.