Rainbow's End by Martha Grimes

I liked it, it’s a bit long but enjoyable enough and with some interesting characters. It’s the first of her books I’ve ever read, and while reading it I felt I should have looked at her bibliography and started from the first, because there were hints of past cases and of characters I probably should have known already, but luckily she didn’t spoil them for me by saying too much. 

I’m glad that Grimes didn’t fill up pages with long, useless (for me) descriptions. She filled them with dialogues, characters (lots of them) and characters’ thoughts. I can bare that, it makes one ‘feel’ them more. The story is an odd one in the way that almost to the end they keep saying that there is a case but they’re not sure because they have nothing to go on with. There are three dead women in England, in three different places. Angela Hope from Santa Fe fell to her death. Helen ‘Nell’ Hawes and Frances Hamilton apparently died of natural causes... DCI Rush investigated Hope but he has a very small part in it. The many characters are: Melrose Plant, aristocratic who gave up his title, his friends Diane Demornay, Marshall Trueblood and Agatha Ardry, in small but recurrent roles :-p hanging around at the Jack&Hammer pub, and Vivian.  Richard Jury, superintendent, and Sergeant Wiggins. Brian Macalvie, divisional commander. Lady Jenny Kennington, met ten years ago at another investigation. Jury and Macalvie talk at the Rainbow’s End pub. Miss Fludd, new entry in town, Melrose is taken by her. Lady Cray was a friend of Fanny. Carole-Anne is Jury’s neighbour. The Cripps (Alice, Petey the victim, little Robespierre, Amy, Aurora, and who knows who else), lots of poor children and their parents Ellie and Ash, and also Beatrice Slocum, secretly a painter and secretly smarter than she lets known; her boyfriend Gabriel ‘Gabe’ Merchant who stays with them because he lost his flat, Bea is just over for tea. Annie Landis, a friend of Nell’s, sick and sad that her son’t gone out with friends. Macalvie: “you wouldn’t happen to have a cuppa, would you?” and she transformed, “she was an Englishwoman after all; first and foremost she could produce a cup of tea” :-)

She told them that the address book they found was not Nell’s because made of leather and “you’d be better off not trying to force the facts to fit your theory” and “wouldn’t it be more sensible to accept the obvious?” : Jury tried not to laugh, Macalvie looked at her in admiration. 

The Pelican pub is where they talk to her son Jimmy. 

Jury goes to Santa Fe, and makes a pact with a girl, ‘Des’ Desdemona, at the airport, to stop smoking. 

Melrose visits Wiggins at the hospital, and sends him flowers from any person he can think of, but forgetting one from himself. He visits the museum where Hamilton died, and Lady Cray, and the Cripps (Spanky is another one?), and he takes Beatrice to a French café. 

In Santa Fe, Jury visits Angela’s workplace, he talks to Sukie Bartholomew who has a shop near hers, Malcolm Corey, half-painter half-wanna-be-serious-actor, scientist Dr Nils Anders who studies the light, Dolores Schell the pharmacist cousin, Mary Dark Hope the 13-year-old sister and her coyote Sunny. He talks to waitress Patsy who remembers them , the women, and he talks to Malcolm’s agent Benny Betts, then to Mary and Nils again... 

Melrose sent a fax at the Blue Parrot pub. He talks to Macalvie then to his friend Polly in  Little bourne and he finally finds Jenny (as per Jury’s request). He visits the Cripps again (is Gloria another one?)... 

Finally, after 500 pages, they realise that all the women smoked, and they were killed by nicotine poison. Angela got poisoned nicotine patches from Dolly and probably gave some to her friends. Jury ‘finally’ realises that Mary is in danger because he told her that Nils is fond of her more than Angela. Mary always suspected her, and so she went to her pharmacy at night to look around, but Dolly came with a gun. Sunny helps her (awww), and Dolly is arrested (who saved Mary? Jack presumably? or Nils? it’s not really clear..) . 

Jury is going crazy not knowing anything about Jenny. Melrose faxed him “She is found!” and nothing more, but he works it out himself and goes there, to find Jenny and Melrose smiling and talking and he becomes jealous with no reasons, and after a few words with them he goes back to London. Upset, he can’t stay in the office and he drives around, ending at the Old Sarum where he meets Trevor, the one who found Angela, and they talk about giving up smoking and Desdemona at the airport, and this makes them talk about Othello, and Trevor says “she never had a chance, did Desdemona. Jealousy, that’s what” and “just goes to show”

And the very last words of the book are:

-Jury was smiling. “Just goes to show”.

The end.... Well, at least he realises he was jealous: going away like that was a very stupid thing to do....