Age of Martha Grimes' Richard Jury?

Cafe Society
1

Having read most of Martha Grimes’ novels featuring Scotland Yard Chief Inspector/later Superintendant Richard Jury when they appeared (early 1980s-present day) I am not sure as how old to imagine Jury:

[ul]
[li]From context the novels seem to be roughly set in what was the present day at the time of publication (e.g. mobile phones become ubiquitious not much later than when they did in reality)[/li][li]Jury’s parents both died in World War 2 he was a young child then (conflicting versions by him and a relative - he may have been just a baby or already at an age when he had biographical memory). So he wasn’ born later than early 1945, i.e. cannot be younger than 63 years.[/li][li]The prospect of retirement isn’t mentioned a far as I recollect[/li][li]Jury’ love life is disastrous but fairly active. Now I’m not saying a sexagenarian cannot have that kind of love life, but surely a sexagenarian cannot have that kind of love life and not be the subject of lots of sarcastic remarks.[/li][li]Melrose Plan (friend and frequent unofficial collaborator) cannot be in late middle age either, as some of the jobs he takes on undercover are physically strenuous, and Plant doesn’t seem to be into fitness.[/li][li]Cyril the office cat also seems to be impossibly old now (for a cat that’s still very agile)[/li][/ul]

2

The men are probably still in their early-to-mid-forties. I would assume that like many serial characters, Jury, Plant and Cyril don’t age.

This can cause apparent continuity problems if their author updates the time of the stories so that they’re contemporary with publication date, but continues to mention certain aspects of the characters’ history that screw up the timeline. I stopped reading the Jury books in the late '80s, so I don’t know if Grimes still mentions his WWII memories in her newest releases. Does she?

3

As of the latest, Dust (2007), yes she does.

4

This very point was one of the reasons why I stopped reading the Richard Jury books. Fine if you want to freeze time or have it move slowly like Sue Grafton does with Kinsey Milhone leaving Kinsey essentially perpetually in her late 30s. Fine if you want to move forward with real time with accompanying technology and social changes. But to me, these are mutually exclusive options. I can accept that Agatha Christie pretty much did that with Miss Marple and with Poirot (though notably not Tuppence and Thomas Beresford) but she gets a pass from me given the era she started writing and well, she is Agatha Christie, and the characters were already old.

5

I feel similarly, PastAllReason. The time thing can really be tough to pull off gracefully.

For example, Robert B. Parker has done a half-‘n’-half with his detective Spenser; he was pushing forty in his earliest appearance, which was in the mid-1970s. By the 2000 books, Spenser and friend/sidekick/contemporary Hawk were still kicking ass and being the biggest baddest dudes in Boston and everywhere they visited. What makes this even weirder is that many of the other oft-recurring characters in the series do age even as Spenser remains static. Most egregious case: Spenser’s semi-adopted son, Paul, who was only 15 when they met but is referred to as 39 or so in one of the later books. That really bugs me, for some reason.

On the other hand, in the series that spans 44 years, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin also freeze in age (at about 57 and 34, respectively), but unlike Parker, Stout was wise enough to also freeze the folks surrounding them. Inspector Cramer is always nearing retirement; Lily Rowan never complains of wrinkles; Fritz never shows signs of dementia. But time marches forward, and there are references to Nixon and Watergate in the last few books. The characters’ personal histories aren’t changed, but they’re a bit blurred – for example, while Archie was a Major in WWII, his service during that particular war isn’t mentioned post-1960. Wolfe’s activities as a boy during WWI aren’t referenced specifically, either.

The one time the frozen time thing comes back to haunt them is when a college-aged character from one of the earliest books (who funnily enough is also named Paul) is brought back in the civil rights-era book A Right to Die and has aged into a middle-aged man. He started out younger than Archie and ends up a good fifteen years older. That’s one of the few continuity issues in the series, which ain’t bad for 44 years.

Getting back to Jury and Plant: At first I was going to suggest that perhaps the books are still intended to take place in the late '80s, thereby making Jury still in his 40s. But according to reader reviews at Amazon, that explanation doesn’t work since Grimes mentions cell phones and the Chunnel in various books. So I have no idea what Grimes is playing at.

According to those reviews, others are finding Jury’s behavior decidedly off in this book, and not just 'cause a sixtysomething guy is breaking furniture during sexual romps. I can’t imagine the depressive, painfully woman-shy Richard Jury performing that activity, but as I said it’s been a while since I’ve read the series… maybe he’s changed over time.

6

Yeah, there are characters that are allowed to age/mature/change, and those that don’t.

Look at Nero Wolfe. It was established that he bought his brownstone and hired Archie Goodwin in 1930. The last of the ‘real’ books was published in 1968. So, nearly a 40 year time span, and Archie was exactly the same early 30-ish wisecracker in the last book as in the first.

It’s probably best for series is you don’t let your character’s age, otherwise you have to start explaining how Spenser, your big tough he-man PI, is able to intimidate hoods and gangsters and all with a look – even though the character should be in his mid-seventies. :rolleyes:

7

Wow, that’s a freaky simulpost! :smiley:

Pedantic nitpicks: Actually, in the first book, Fer de Lance, it’s mentioned that Archie’s been living/working with Wolfe for seven years, so (at that point, at least) his date of hire would’ve been circa 1927. Also, the series didn’t end until 1975, with A Family Affair. (Which means my own guesstimation of 44 years was off – should be 41 or 42, really.)

8

This latest Jury book is the first time that the character age/ actual chronology thing really bothered me enough to notice it, to the point where I was doing the math in my head and saying, “damn, he’s getting old!” Not that I thought he was too old for furniture-breaking sex, though! I wish Martha had just cut the references to his war-time memories, because they didn’t really add anything to the plot, and instead added distraction…and since his cousin has already told him that he’s mis-remembering his mother’s death, there really is no point to bringing it up over and over again.

I heard Earlene Fowler talk once about the difficulties in writing a series of books that span only a year or three of a character’s life, when in the real world it has taken twenty years to write them and technology has changed so much, and that technology HAS to be in the current book, because she isn’t writing period-pieces. Her Bennie Harper series does a fairly good job of incorporating modern-day technolgy into the latest books, I think…at least I don’t start doing math in my head!