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
Grimes's popular mysteries are named after British pubs, and Rees's excellent performance here will make readers feel as if they're at the bar themselves, listening to the actor spin a good, old-fashioned detective story. Grimes (The Blue Last) has updated Josephine Tey's famous Daughter of Time by having her detective, Scotland Yard's own Richard Jury, solve a mystery while spending time in a hospital. Jury's friend, the aristocratic and occasionally ponderous Melrose Plant, overhears two women talking in the Grave Maurice about Richard's surgeon, whose daughter disappeared two years before from the racing stable where she worked. With Plant doing the legwork, Jury manages to solve the case without getting out of his pajamas. Rees, known for playing an arrogant British ambassador on The West Wing, nicely delineates Plant from the saltier, more ironic Jury, presenting a satisfying tale that should delight mystery fans. 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 AudioFile
Martha Grimes's fans will be relieved to know that Superintendent Richard Jury, left for dead at the conclusion of her last book, is alive. Recovering from being shot, he is also bored. That's why he accepts Melrose Plant's challenge to figure out what happened to 15-year-old Nell Ryder, who went missing two years earlier from her grandfather's horse stud farm in Cambridgeshire. If you like abridgments, listen to this one; producer John McElroy did a difficult job as well as can be done. That said, devoted fans will miss the atmos-pherics typical of Grimes's novels; the abridgment has a pell-mell quality uncharacteristic of her writing. Roger Rees uses his fine-timbered voice to give a captivating reading and create a wealth of believable characters. He effortlessly handles the difficulty of many characters in conversation and, for a male narrator, is unusually skilled with women and children. We have one major quibble--Rees gives sophisticated Jury the broad vowels of a "plodding copper's" accent. That aside, a delightful listen. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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

Book Description
Richard Jury returns in the 5-week New York Times bestseller

A strange and unsolved case of abduction is reopened by Melrose Plant, reexamined by Richard Jury-and revisited by a killer...

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
The 18th novel in Martha Grimes's popular Richard Jury series finds the author extending her range, echoing the work of two other masters of mystery -- Josephine Tey and Dick Francis -- while skewering British society with a droll, rapier wit.

The fun starts with Jury lying in a hospital bed, recuperating from the bullet wound he received at the end of The Blue Last. In a scene reminiscent of Tey￯﾿ﾽs classic hospital bed mystery, The Daughter of Time, a bored, frustrated Jury is overjoyed when his assistant, Melrose Plant, arrives with a proffered mystery. While in the local pub, called the Grave Maurice, Plant overhears a conversation concerning the disappearance of teenager Nell Ryder, the daughter of Jury￯﾿ﾽs surgeon. Nell vanished two years earlier from the family horse farm, but there are rumors she￯﾿ﾽs been seen riding at midnight on her favorite mare. On Jury￯﾿ﾽs orders, Plant enters the occasionally bizarre world of horse racing. There he meets Nell￯﾿ﾽs cousin, Maurice, a grave lad plagued by an adolescent growth spurt that￯﾿ﾽs left him too tall to be a jockey, his only dream since he was a boy. The eccentric suspects start piling up, as do the murders, as Jury is eventually released from the hospital and enters the fray. Grimes, perhaps overcompensating for entering the equestrian universe dominated by Dick Francis, spends a bit too much time giving us the minute details of horse breeding. However, the offbeat characters -- especially a demanding nurse who infuriates Jury -- are so likable they soon smooth over any bumps in the narrative road. The Grave Maurice is a strange and unique amalgam of satire and mystery that works on most levels, thanks to the author￯﾿ﾽs sure and talented hand. Tom Piccirilli

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Chew on this," says Melrose Plant to Richard Jury, who's in the hospital being driven crazy by Hannibal, a nurse who likes to speculate on his chances for survival. Jury could use a good story, preferably one not ending with his own demise.

Plant tells Jury of something he overheard in The Grave Maurice, a pub near the hospital. A woman told an intriguing story about a girl named Nell Ryder, granddaughter to the owner of the Ryder Stud Farm in Cambridgeshire, who went missing more than a year before and has never been found. What is especially interesting to Plant is that Nell is also the daughter of Jury's surgeon.

But Nell's disappearance isn't the only mystery at the Ryder farm. A woman has been found dead on the track-a woman who was a stranger even to the Ryders.

But not to Plant. She's the woman he saw in The Grave Maurice. Together with Jury, Nell's family, and the Cambridgeshire police, Plant embarks on a search to find Nell and bring her home. But is there more to their mission than just restoring a fifteen-year-old girl to her family?

The Grave Maurice is the eighteenth entry in the Richard Jury series and, from its pastoral opening to its calamitous end, is full of the same suspense and humor that devoted readers expect from Martha Grimes.

Author Biography: 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Grimes's popular mysteries are named after British pubs, and Rees's excellent performance here will make readers feel as if they're at the bar themselves, listening to the actor spin a good, old-fashioned detective story. Grimes (The Blue Last) has updated Josephine Tey's famous Daughter of Time by having her detective, Scotland Yard's own Richard Jury, solve a mystery while spending time in a hospital. Jury's friend, the aristocratic and occasionally ponderous Melrose Plant, overhears two women talking in the Grave Maurice about Richard's surgeon, whose daughter disappeared two years before from the racing stable where she worked. With Plant doing the legwork, Jury manages to solve the case without getting out of his pajamas. Rees, known for playing an arrogant British ambassador on The West Wing, nicely delineates Plant from the saltier, more ironic Jury, presenting a satisfying tale that should delight mystery fans. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 5). (Aug.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews