The beautiful red-haired woman was dressed in Yves Saint Laurent and Jimmy Choo, shot dead on the back patio of a rather seedy little Chesham pub. Two days after she was found, no one had yet come forward to indentify her. Superintendent Richard Jury, detective with New Scotland Yard, finds himself all over the tabloids while assisting Thames Valley Police on the case. Inspector Morse jokes aside, he finds them perfectly capable on their own, so why ask the Met for assistance? All puzzlement is put aside when similar women in fine clothes and designer shoes are found murdered in small London neighborhoods, and his old nemesis, Harry Johnson, is close enough to the scene of each crime to be a 'person of interest'. The case is a welcome distraction for Jury. After a car accident, his lover Lu Aguilar lies in hospital, prognosis uncertain. She talks of returning to Brazil, as she sees no future for herself with London CID. Many familiar faces, including Mungo the dog, the beautiful Carole-Anne and of course Melrose Plant are threaded seamlessly through the weave of a mystery involving masks and double lives that keeps you turning pages, uncertain of the identity of the killer until Jury himself knows. At the culmination the foreshadowing leaps out in high relief, making me want to turn to the beginning and read it all again, with fresh eyes. As I have come to expect from Grimes, THE BLACK CAT balances deeply moving scenes with comedy both subtle and brash. Even the characters who inhabit a mere paragraph are drawn with distinctive lines, memorable for their own sake, and not just for how they are tied to the central mystery.