Very early in THE LAMORNA WINK, one of the characters, an amateur magician, says "Magic was kind of like murder or a murder mystery: distract, dissuade --- that was the way. Put a clue here and at the same time call attention to something quite different over there." This is a good description of all good mysteries and of this one in particular.  

Although this is billed as a Richard Jury mystery, the Scotland Yard detective is laboring in North Ireland during most of this story and it falls to his friend Melrose Plant to assess clues and assist the police. In fact, in many ways this is Plant's story --- Plant the aristocrat who refuses to use his title, the easygoing amateur who routinely gets involved in murders. Plant has decided to rent some property in Cornwall, in part to get away from his Aunt Agatha for a while. Agatha, however, by some mysterious radar, follows him and continues to make his life miserable. He rents Seabourne, a house filled with the personal belongings of a family who once lived there, down to the framed photographs on the end table and mantle. The real estate agent says she believes that their two children drowned at the foot of stone stairs going down to the ocean.  

Meanwhile Plant meets Johnny Wells, an amateur magician and part-time student who lives with his Aunt Chris --- who has disappeared.

If these two mysteries are not enough, a body is discovered near the local pub, the Lamorna Wink. Division Commander Brian Macalvie, with whom Jury has worked in the past, is assigned to the case and is ably assisted by Jury's Sergeant Wiggins, a hypochondriac of the first order. There will be more dead bodies before the mystery is solved.

Grimes does many things very well, but what she perhaps excels at is development of character. The regular characters, Plant and Jury, and the tangential ones who revolve about them, are a collection of bizarre and eccentric people who, nevertheless, seem believable. The non-series characters are nicely developed and take on a life of their own quite early in the story. Grimes has a nice touch when describing people. For example, Aunt Agatha sees herself as the center of every gathering and pays no attention to how others might take what she says. When she cannot understand why Plant is laughing at her, he tells her "You could say you've been to Bletchley, but you've never been to you."

Grimes has a whimsical sense of humor which sometimes goes over the top, such as with the implausible actions revolving around Vivian's wedding. But most of the time the reader can appreciate Grimes' humor without feeling clobbered over the head with it. She uses place very nicely to convey atmosphere. The tearoom, of which Chris is co-owner, is warm and pleasant and produces a cozy, homey feeling. The nasty house where a pornographer lived is cold and barren. Seabourne is crowded with memories and makes Plant think back to his own childhood and remember a father who was cold and distant from him. His mother, on the other hand, had a lover who also repelled him. Perhaps these are the reasons he is so eager to abandon his title.

One could say that the theme of this book is the death of the young, the two children drowned in the ocean, and the death of youth, as Johnny's world comes crashing down about him and Plant tries and fails to find his youth again. Conversely, the grandfather of the two children, the Chicken King (a string of fast food restaurants), has purchased a manor house and created Bletchley Hall, a hospice and a nursing home for the elderly.

The mystery, while subtle, is also complex and sinuous. The reader is not exactly sure whether all of these events relate to one another or not. This is one of the hallmarks of a Grimes book, to interweave seemingly unrelated events in such a way as to perplex, to baffle and then provide the reader with an elegant solution. It's that old sleight of hand that Johnny talked about on the first page. Grimes gets the reader to look fixedly in one direction while she is cleverly doing things with her other hand that will ultimately show us the solution

If there is a weakness in this book, however, it is in the denouement. It relies a great deal on coincidence and the method of the first murders is uncertain enough to be improbable. And some information is provided woefully late for the reader to deduce the solution. But Jury wraps everything up very nicely and the reader certainly closes the book with a satisfied feeling.