The Grave Maurice by Martha Grimes

In her follow-up to the best-selling novel The Blue Last, the author revisits sleuth Richard Jury, who is lying flat on his back recovering in a hospital bed but nevertheless is capable of overhearing a story that will start his next murder investigation. 125,000 first printing. Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review In this, the 18th outing in Martha Grimes's popular series featuring Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury and his aristocrat pal Melrose Plant, Jury, recuperating from a near-fatal shooting (The Blue Last) hears about the two-year-old abduction of his doctor's talented young daughter, Nell Ryder, who disappeared from her grandfather's stud farm, along with a champion thoroughbred horse. Pursuing the stalled investigation when he's released from the hospital, Jury stumbles on a complicated scheme involving murder, insurance fraud, and a scheme to replicate a popular menopause drug derived from the urine of pregnant mares. As readers of this popular series know, while there's a mystery at the heart of every Jury novel, the real payoff is in Grimes's lucent prose, wit, and complex characterizations. Fans of British mystery writer Dick Francis, who's made the world of thoroughbreds his own turf, will find this a delightful diversion, particularly since Francis recently announced his retirement from the genre. --Jane Adams From Publishers Weekly In the 18th entry in this popular series (after 2001's The Blue Last), Grimes serves up a convoluted hodgepodge of rape, kidnapping and murder, then throws in corporate greed, animal rights issues and assorted satires of modern British society. Supt. Jury is hospitalized following a shooting in an earlier case. His aristocratic assistant, Melrose Plant (aka Lord Ardry) overhears two women in a pub curiously called the Grave Maurice discussing the disappearance of horse enthusiast Nell Ryder, who turns out to be the daughter of Jury's doctor, the first of many implausible coincidences. Nell's devoted 16-year-old cousin, who's also named Maurice, has been in a grave mood following Nell's apparent abduction. This poor lad must also cope with his father's death, his mother's flight to America and a growth spurt that has left him too tall to be a jockey, his life's ambition. Most of this long and winding tale deals with the world of horse racing and its seamier sides. Pregnant mares are being badly treated at a stud farm where their urine is collected for a commercial menopause drug. People and prize thoroughbreds get snatched away in the night, and, to the dismay of his elders, a greedy stepbrother has left the Ryder farm to peddle IPOs in London. Jury's investigation gets off to a tardy start, by which time Plant has dug himself in deep, even buying his own horse to try to understand the lore of racing. Frequent digressions divert the sleuths (and the reader) from the investigative trail. (Aug. 26) Forecast: A 10-city author tour, on top of national print publicity and advertising, should help launch this one into bestseller territory. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Richard Jury is back, and he's in the hospital but not for long. Dependable sidekick Melrose Plant has overheard the tale of a missing girl, and when it turns out that she is the daughter of Jury's surgeon and that the gossipy woman who related the story is now dead the daring duo take the case. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist This satisfyingly old-fashioned detective tale pays homage to Josephine Tey's famous historical mystery The Daughter of Time. Like Tey's detective, Richard Jury is bedridden, recovering from shotgun wounds. And, as in Tey, a colleague, the aristocrat Melrose Plant, tries to get Jury's mind off his wounds by having him puzzle over a crime. Tey's mystery of who murdered the princes in the tower is updated to who kidnapped and perhaps imprisoned a contemporary princess, the daughter of Jury's surgeon, who disappeared two years before from a stable that employed her. Although Grimes writes contemporary mysteries, readers may find themselves checking the dates given, since Grimes' style is veddy 1940s British cozy. The pace is leisurely (often to the point of exasperation, as Plant putters about in his sleuthing), and the language is decidedly throwback and formal. As in every Richard Jury of Scotland Yard novel (this is the eighteenth), the action centers on a pub--in this case, the Grave Maurice is the grim-looking pub in which colleague Plant overhears a conversation that gets him and Jury involved in the girl's disappearance. There is far too much of the foppish Plant (Jury is in the hospital for the first 26 chapters), but vintage Grimes nonetheless. Connie Fletcher Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved About the Author Martha Grimes is the bestselling author of seventeen Richard Jury mysteries and also of the acclaimed fiction Cold Flat Junction, Hotel Paradise, The End of the Pier, and The Train Now Departing. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1. Twenty months later Melrose Plant looked around the rather grim environs of the Grave Maurice and wondered if it was patronized by the staff of the Royal London Hospital across the street. Apparently it did serve as some sort of stopping-off point for them, for Melrose recognized one of the doctors standing at the farther end of the long bar. As Melrose stood there inside the door, the doctor emptied his half-pint, gathered up his coat and turned to leave. He passed Melrose on his way out of the pub and gave him a distracted nod and a vague smile, as if he were trying to place him. Melrose stepped up to the place the doctor had left, filling the vacuum. He was looking at the woman close by, one of surpassing beauty-glossy, dark hair, high cheekbones, eyes whose color he couldn't see without staring but which were large and widely spaced. She was talking to another woman, hair a darkish blond, whose back was turned to Melrose and who drank a pale drink, probably a Chardonnay, whose ubiquity, together with the wine bars that loved to serve it up, Melrose couldn't understand. The dark-haired one was drinking stout. Good for her. The bartender, a bearded Indian, posed an indecipherable query that Melrose could only suppose was a variant of What will it be, mate? The operative term was either grog or dog, as in Want a bit o' grog? or Walkin' yer dog? Having no dog, Melrose ordered an Old Peculier. The Grave Maurice had its foot in the door of hovel-like. Melrose looked all around and made his assessment, pleased. For some reason, he could always appreciate a hovel; he felt quite at home. The incomprehensible barman, the patched window, the broken table leg, the streaked mirror, the clientele. The two women near him were a cut above the other customers. They were well dressed, the dark-haired one quite fashionably, in a well-cut black suit and understated jewelry. The blond one, whose profile Melrose glimpsed, appeared to know the barman (even to understand the barman) with his raffishly wound turban. After he returned, smilingly, with the refills and Melrose's fresh drink and then took himself off, the dark-haired woman picked up their conversation again. The blonde was doing the listening. They were talking about someone named Ryder, which immediately made Melrose prick up his ears, as this was the name of the doctor who had just departed and whom, he supposed, the one woman must have recognized. But he was rather surprised to hear him further referred to as poor sod. The second woman, whose voice was distinct while at the same time being low and unobtrusive, asked the dark-haired one what she meant. Melrose waited for the answer. Unfortunately, the details were getting lost in the woman's lowered voice, but he did catch the word disappeared. The dark-haired woman dipped her head to her glass and said something else that Melrose couldn't catch. But then he heard, His daughter. It was in the papers. The blonde seemed appalled. When was that? Nearly two years ago, but it doesn't get any- Melrose lost the rest of the comment. The one who had made it shrugged slightly, not a dismissive shrug, but a weary one. Weary, perhaps, of misfortune. If she was a doctor too, Melrose could understand the weariness. Then she said, . . . brother was my . . . killed . . . The blonde made a sound of sympathy and said, How awful. Did- If only they'd stop talking clearly on the one hand and whispering on the other! Melrose, who kept telling himself he couldn't help overhearing this conversation, could, of course, have taken his beer to a table, and he supposed he would if his presence so close beside them got to be a little too noticeable. But he wanted to hear whatever he could about this doctor's daughter; it sounded fascinating. He thought the phrase poor sod suggested some unhappy tale and he was always up for one of those. Sort of thing that makes you glad you're you and not them. How morbid. He then heard something about insurance and the dark-haired woman was going on about South America and a warmer climate. She appeared to be planning a trip. He didn't care about this; he wanted to hear more about the person who had disappeared. The blonde occasionally turned to retrieve her cigarette, and then Melrose could pick up the drift. -this doctor's daughter? The woman facing Melrose nodded. So it never ends for him . . . closure. I hate that word, said the blonde, with a little laugh. (Melrose was ready to marry her on the spot. Inwardly, he applauded. He hated the word, too.) All it means is that something's unended, unfinished. Why not just say that? The blonde was not in the mood for a semantic argument. There never is, anyway, she said, slipping from the stool. What? The dark-haired woman was puzzled. Closure. Everything remains unfinished. The dark-haired woman sighed. Perhaps. Poor Roger. Roger Ryder, thought Melrose. When the blonde caught Melrose looking and listening, she gave him a rueful half smile. He pretended not to notice, though it would be difficult not to notice that mouth, that hair. Melrose paid for his beer and slid off the stool. His daughter. Two years ago something had happened to her, and it hadn't been death. Death would have closed it. The girl had disappeared. Had something happened in South America? No, he thought that must be another story altogether. On the other hand, Ryder's daughter's disappearance-that had been in the papers. But Melrose wouldn't have to search the Times. Roger Ryder was Richard Jury's surgeon. --from The Grave Maurice by Martha Grimes, Copyright ® September 2002, Viking Press, a member of Penguin Putnam, Inc., used by permission.