The Lamorna Wink

New York: Viking, 1999. BH3 - A first edition (First published 1999 stated with complete numberline) hardcover book SIGNED by Martha Grimes on title page in very good condition and a very good dust jacket. Dust jacket and book have some bumped corners, wrinkling on the spine edges, light discoloration and shelf wear. Although not marked in any way, this copy comes from the personal collection of Otto Penzler, legendary editor and founder of the Mysterious Press, an award-winning icon in the genre. 9.5"x6.25", 368 pages. Satisfactiom Guarenteed. "Just bring me a pot of poison." So says Melrose Plant as he sits gloomily in a tea-room in Cornwall, served by a remarkable young fellow named Johnny Wells-waiter, cab driver, and amateur magician. The gloom (and the pot of poison) is all for Agatha, the aunt who has followed Melrose to Bletchley village, where he had planned to escape his Long Piddleton lethargy by renting an old house high on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea. Seabourne house looks like the set of a romantic film of the forties or fifties, but Melrose is unpre- pared for the onslaught of memories it triggers. And in examining his own past, he is caught up in the tragic past of the Bletchley family. The village itself is dominated by a stately home turned hospice (providential for Detective Sergeant Alfred Wiggins), thanks to the billionaire Morris Bletchley, the American developer of a chain of fast food eateries and owner of Seabourne. With Richard Jury sent on a fool's errand to Northern Ireland, Melrose turns to Brian Macalvie for help when Johnny's aunt, Chris Wells, disappears. Macalvie, a commander in the Devon and Cornwall police, is conducting his own investigation into the murder of a woman on a publie footpath near the hamlet of Lamorna Cove, Macalvie and Melrose repair to Lamorna's single pub, The Wink, and here the intrepid and intense Brian Macalvie reveals a side of himself he'd just as soon had stayed buried up in Scotland, Macalvie's past, Plant's past, and the tragic past of the Bletchleys converge at the end with Richard Jury, who comes to help set things to rights. The Lamorna Wink once again confirms Martha Grimes as "one of the masters of the genre". (Newsweek). Signed by Author. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.