The Knowledge

The Knowledge is a mystery novel by the American writer Martha Grimes, published in 2018. It belongs to her long-running series about the London police officer Richard Jury.

The book opens with a cab driver named Robbie Parsons, whose knowledge of London is the qualification for the job described in the title, being hijacked by a man who has just robbed or killed in front of the Artemis Club, an establishment that is part gallery and part casino. The criminal gets away to Nairobi, and Jury picks up the case after seeing a picture of one of the victims in the newspaper and recognising him. He brings in the friends who appear throughout the series, including Melrose Plant and Marshall Trueblood, and the investigation ranges from gem mines in Tanzania to a disused casino in Nevada and an obscure London pub that only cab drivers know how to find. Grimes mixes the police work with the private lives of a large recurring cast, which is the habit of the series.

Grimes began the Richard Jury novels in 1981 with The Man with a Load of Mischief, and each of them is named after a real London pub.