The third in the bestselling Richard Jury mystery series by Martha Grimes. A spinster whose passion was bird-watching, a dotty peer who pinched pennies, and a baffling murder made the tiny village of Littlebourne a most extraordinary place. And a severed finger made a ghastly clue in the killing that led local constables from a corpse to a boggy footpath to a beautiful lady’s mansion. But Richard Jury refused, preferring to take the less traveled route to a slightly disreputable pub, the Anodyne Necklace. There, drinks all around loosened enough tongues to link a London mugging with the Littlebourne murder and a treasure map that would chart the way to yet another chilling crime.

A killer targets Shakespeare-loving tourists in the New York Times–bestselling mystery series full of “vivacity, charm, and wit” (Kirkus Reviews). The Dirty Duck is a pub in Shakespeare’s beloved Stratford-on-Avon, and it’s here that Miss Gwendolyn Bracegirdle of Sarasota, Florida—fresh from a performance of As You Like It—takes her last drink. Mere minutes later she is slashed ear to ear. The only clue to this baffling and brutal murder is a pair of lines from an unknown poem printed across a theater program. It seems that a razor-happy killer is stalking a group of rich American tourists. And Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury, just passing through Stratford for a glimpse of the intriguing Lady Kennington, finds himself taking a crash course in the bloodier side of Elizabethan verse.