Title: A Martha Grimes Omnibus
Description: This omnibus contains three books from Martha Grimes' acclaimed Inspector Richard Jury series. The book descriptions below are from marthagrimes.com. 

NOTE: For some reason--possibly due to the publication dates of different editions--the books appear in this omnibus in reverse order. If you want to read in series order, proceed as follows:

Book 6:  ***Help the Poor Struggler*** on or around page 447
Book 7:  ***The Deer Leap*** on or around page 210
Book 8:  ***I Am the Only Running Footman*** on or around page 4.


***I Am the Only Running Footman***
*(Series book 8 / 1986 / Begins on page 4)*

In a rainy ditch in a Devon wood, a hitchhiker is found dead. Almost a year later, on another rainy night, another murder; this time, however, the victim is found just outside a pub called I Am the Only Running Footman, near Berkeley Square in London’s fashionable Mayfair District. Devon policeman Brian Macalvie is convinced that the two murders are connected. And thus, in his eighth case, Richard Jury is drawn into the so-called Porphyria killings. A particularly elusive pair of murders. From the streets of London to the village of Somers Abbas, Jury and Macalvie are joined by the stolid if hypochondriac Sergeant Wiggins and the reluctant Melrose Plant. They meet in another pub, the Mortal Man, and, amidst the clatter and cry of the Warboys family, they ponder a labyrinthine set of clues.

***The Deer Leap*** 
*(Series book 7 / 1st edition January 1, 1985 / ~ page 210)*

In her latest Richard Jury adventure, Martha Grimes takes us to Ashdown Dean, a little English village where animals are dying in a series of seemingly innocuous accidents. While the puzzling deaths of village pets may raise some idle gossip over a pint or two at the Deer Leap, the village pub, this hardly seems a case for Superintendent Jury of Scotland yard. Nor does it seem much of a challenge for the combined deductive powers of Jury and Melrose, the affable former Earl of Caverness.

It is his mystery writing-writing, amethyst-eyed friend, Polly Praed, who drags Plant and Jury to Ashdown Dean. The impatient Polly, having yanked open a call box in the pouring rain, is ill prepared for what lands at her feet. The now-deadly case is cause for calling in Scotland Yard.

***Help the Poor Struggler*** 
*(Series book 6 / 1st edition January 1, 1985 / ~ page 447)*

Around bleak Dartmoor, where the Hound of the Baskervilles once bayed, three children have been brutally murdered. Now Richard Jury of Scotland Yard joins forces with a hot-tempered local constable named Brian Macalvie to track down the killer. The trail begins at a desolate pub, Help the Poor Struggler. It leads straight to the estate of Lady Jessica, a ten-year-old orphaned heiress who lives with her mysterious uncle and ever-changing series of governesses. And as suspense spreads across the forbidding landscape, an old injustice returns to haunt Macalvie…with clues that link a murder in the distant past with a killing yet to come.
Subjects: Scotland Yard mystery
Places: London (England), Devon (county in England)
Time periods: 1980's