From the opening paragraphs of Double Double:“We were sitting in a coffee shop talking, looking at the view of downtown Charlottesville, Virginia. This was ten years ago, and we had both been off alcohol for more than a decade. We were disagreeing about the best way to stay sober, when my mother said, “I think we should write a book about alcoholism.” I sat back. ‘We?’ ‘Both of us. Two points of view.’ ” To the final page of this dual memoir, Martha and Ken Grimes keep the reader entertained and informed. Double Double is a unique and honest, dual memoir of alcoholism, a disease that affects nearly 45 million Americans each year. People who suffer from alcoholism as well as their families and friends know that while it is possible to get sober—there is no one “right” way to do this. Now, award-winning mystery writer Martha Grimes and her son, Ken Grimes, offer two points of view on their struggles with alcoholism. In alternating chapters, they share their stories—stories of drinking, recovery, relapse, friendship, travel, work, success and failure. Double Double is an intensely personal, candid and illuminating book, filled with insights, humor, a little self-deprecation, and a lot of self-evaluation.
Author
Martha Grimes is an American author of detective fiction. She was born May 2 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to D.W., a city solicitor, and to June, who owned the Mountain Lake Hotel in Western Maryland where Martha and her brother spent much of their childhood. Grimes earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Maryland. She has taught at the University of Iowa, Frostburg State University, and Montgomery College. Grimes is best known for her series of novels featuring Richard Jury, an inspector with Scotland Yard, and his friend Melrose Plant, a British aristocrat who has given up his titles. Each of the Jury mysteries is named after a pub. Her page-turning, character-driven tales fall into the mystery subdivision of "cozies." In 1983, Grimes received the Nero Wolfe Award for best mystery of the year for The Anodyne Necklace. The background to Hotel Paradise is drawn on the experiences she enjoyed spending summers at her mother's hotel in Mountain Lake Park, Maryland. One of the characters, Mr Britain, is drawn on Britten Leo Martin, Sr, who then ran Marti's Store which he owned with his father and brother. Martin's Store is accessible by a short walkway from Mountain Lake, the site of the former Hotel, which was torn down in 1967. She splits her time between homes in Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
