Biography of Martha Grimes
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Martha Grimes spent
every summer at her mother's hotel in Western Maryland. Her favorite memories
of that time are her mother's cooking and her brother's theatrical productions
in the big garage behind the hotel to which she was rarely admitted. Grown-up,
she now spends her time in Washington, D.C. and Santa Fe, NM, with many
side-trips to England.
It was her first poem in Send Bygraves that inspired
her to turn from poetry to mystery novels. Martha sent the novel to several
publishers. In 1979 an editor at Little, Brown offered to publish The Man
with a Load in 1981 and each book in the series features an English pub
from which the title is taken. And so from there, Martha Grimes has
published a book every year for the past sixteen years.
In 1992, with the publication of The End of the
Pier, Martha departed from her beloved cast of characters in the Richard
Jury series to write a contemporary novel based in Western Maryland that
combined a serial killer murder mystery with a poignant story of the problems
in a mother and son relationship. The book established her as a writer
of merit outside of mystery fiction.
All of Grimes books are named after pubs and
the pubs are for real. The titles are not randomly chosen; indeed, because
she can't begin a book unless she have the name of it. It is the story
that follows from the title, not the title chosen later for the story.
She has one son, a public relations executive
in New York City and she is also the owner of one black cat named "Blackie".