November. in a bleak month, a bleak Richard Jury takes an aimless ride on one of London's icons--the old double-decker bus, a # 14 traveling the Fulham Road. His attention is caught by a woman "with hair so gossamer-pale you could see the moon through it," wearing a fur coat, boarding his bus in front of a pub called the Stargazey. Her behavior intrigues him, as she leaves, reboards, and leaves the bus again. Jury follows her to the gates of Fulham Palace--but only to the gates. There he stops. Later he wonders if the death in the walled garden of Fulham Palace could have been averted if he had gone in... nd if this precipitated still another death in a London club named Boring's, which is Melrose Plant's crusty old men's club. Before Jury and Plant work out the connection between these killings, they are both helped and hindered by Martha Grimes' usual band of eccentrics: Theo Wrenn Browne, trying to shut down the Long Pidd library; the Cripps family trying to shut down civilization; and Diane Demorney, the new horoscope columnist for the Sidbury Star, trying to shut down the heavens. It all starts with two unlikely passengers on the same number 14 Fulham Road bus--Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury and a glamorous blonde woman in a sable coat. He can't keep his eyes off her, and when she disembarks, Jury follows her to the gates of Fulham Palace. He loses her in the fog, however, and when she's found shot to death in the herb garden of the palace, the game's afoot--especially since the victim may only look like Jury's blonde, but not be her at all. Two glamorous women in priceless fur coats in an obscure little museum in the London suburbs on the same foggy autumn night? Well, maybe. Or maybe not. The plot ultimately involves chicanery in the art world, a family of Russian émigrés, a missing Chagall, an international female assassin, a couple of unsettlingly strange young girls, and a hilarious send up of a stuffy English men's club. The tale serves a hearty helping of Grimes's usual interesting, not to say eccentric, characters. Among the most consistently fascinating of these is Jury's aristocratic friend Melrose Plant, a direct descendant of Lord Peter Wimsey and other wealthy, titled, amateur English detectives. Fans of Grimes's previous Superintendent Jury capers--each of which takes its name from an English pub--will enjoy the jokes, and new readers will appreciate the author's dry wit, her sharp eye for British oddities, and the way she turns an ordinary police procedural into a cozy little study of the national character. The Jury series began with The Man with a Load of Mischief (1981) and has included The Deer Leap (1985), The Horse You Came In On (1993), The Case Has Altered (1997), and several other tales. --Jane Adams Grimes' popular Richard Jury returns in top form. A dead woman found at London's Fulham Palace is a dead ringer for a mysterious passenger who boarded the same bus Jury did just a few days earlier. Jury's only lead to the victim's identity is the fur coat she was wearing. The coat, which once belonged to an aging film star, was passed along to a family of Russian immigrants who own a posh art gallery. Jury asks his friend, art collector Melrose Plant, to investigate the connection between the coat, the art gallery, and the dead woman. Then another deadly clue turns up when a retired art critic with links to the gallery is murdered. Jury and Plant finally unravel the myriad bits of evidence and uncover an art-theft ring, unmask a professional assassin, and prove--sadly and yet again--that hatred, greed, and anger remain in plentiful supply and continue to drive much of human behavior. Grimes' latest delivers a delightfully entertaining blend of irony, danger, and intrigue, liberally laced with wit and charm. Certain to be popular, this is a must-have from one of today's most gifted and intelligent writers. Emily Melton Another exotic adventure in never-never land for Scotland Yards Richard Jury and his rich, titled sidekick, Melrose Plant. At the Stargazey pub, Jury observed a striking blond woman in an elegant fur coat. He idly followed her to the gates of Fulham Palace, which she entered while he went about his business. That night, the body of a woman fitting that description (but lacking identification) is found in the Palace gardensmurdered. But Jury knows its not the same woman. The fur coat provides a trail that leads to old-time movie star Mona Dresser, whod given the coat to Olivia Inge, her daughter by the late Clive Fabricant. Clives second wife is Ilona Kuraukov, aristocratic mother of Nicholas and Sebastian, art gallery owners. At this point, Jury enlists old friend and unofficial aide Melrose Plant to find out more about the Fabricants. The murder victim has finally been identified as one Nancy Pastis, a widow with an alibi and a weird story of a vanished child to tell. Meanwhile, Melroses efforts at the gallery and at Borings, his London club, br