Martha Grimes — I Am the Only Running Footman

London, Michael O'Mara Books Ltd, 1986. First edition. Cloth. A bright, clean first UK edition of I Am the Only Running Footman by Martha Grimes. Bound in paper-covered boards with gilt lettering and an unclipped dustwrapper. First UK Edition. Martha Grimes, b.1931, is an American author of detective fiction. Grimes earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Maryland. She has taught at the University of Iowa, Frostburg State University, and Montgomery College. Grimes is best known for her series of novels featuring Richard Jury, an inspector with Scotland Yard, and his friend Melrose Plant, a British aristocrat who has given up his titles. Each of the Jury mysteries is named after a pub. In 1983, Grimes received the Nero Award for best mystery of the year for The Anodyne Necklace. "In a rainy ditch in a Devon wood, a hitchhiker is found dead. Almost a year later, on another rainy night, another murder; this time, however, the victim is found just outside a pub called I Am the Only Running Footman, near Berkeley Square in London's fashionable Mayfair District. Devon policeman Brian Macalvie is convinced that the two murders are connected. And thus, in his eighth case, Richard Jury is drawn into the so-called Porphyria killings. A particularly elusive pair of murders. From the streets of London to the village of Somers Abbas, Jury and Macalvie are joined by the stolid if hypochondriac Sergeant Wiggins and the reluctant Melrose Plant. They meet in another pub, the Mortal Man, and, amidst the clatter and cry of the Warboys family, they ponder a labyrinthine set of clues." In paper covered boards in the original dustwrapper. External in lovely condition. The binding is tight and firm. There is almost no wear to the extremities. There is almost no wear to the dustwrapper. Internally the pages are clean and bright. Fine . Ill.: None. Fine/Fine.