Martha Grimes (born May 2, 1931) is an American author of detective fiction.
Martha Grimes was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to William Dermit Grimes, Pittsburgh's city solicitor, and June Dunnington, who owned the Mountain Lake Hotel in Western Maryland where Martha and her brother spent much of their childhood. 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. Her page-turning, character-driven tales fall into the mystery subdivision of "cozies." In 1983, Grimes received the Nero Wolfe Award for best mystery of the year for The Anodyne Necklace.
The background to Hotel Paradise is drawn on the experiences she enjoyed spending summers at her mother's hotel in Mountain Lake Park, Maryland. One of the characters, Mr Britten, is drawn on Britten Leo Martin, Sr, who then ran Martin's Store which he owned with his father and brother. Martin's Store is accessible by a short walkway from the Mountain Lake Hotel, the site of the former Hotel, which was torn down in 1967.
She splits her time between homes in Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Read more about Martha Grimes: Works
Famous quotes containing the word martha:
“Youve strung your breasts
with a rattling rope of pearls,
tied a jangling belt
around those deadly hips
and clinking jewelled anklets
on both your feet.
So, stupid,
if you run off to your lover like this,
banging all these drums,
then why
do you shudder with all this fear
and look up, down;
in every direction?”
—Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.?, Kashmirian king, compiler, author of some of the poems in the anthology which bears his name. translated from the Amaruataka by Martha Ann Selby, vs. 31, Motilal Banarsidass (1983)