The End of the Pier

Rating:
Summary: A Mystery with Character
Review: Grimes' English Detective Jury mysteries have always been delightful because they are English mysteries that move with American speed. Her characters are special - charming and funny. A well-developed character is sometimes hard to find in a good mystery novel. The characters in The End of the Pier are so real that you will feel your loss when you finish the book. I still miss them. This is a beautifully written and unforgettable book - and a mystery to boot

Rating:
Summary: could have been a lot better.
Review: I like Martha Grimes (especially loved Hotel Paradise) and the detective here, DeGheyn, is a really great character. Likewise Maude, the well-drawn waitress who loves him. Both of these characters are great. The story plugs along fairly well until the end -- what a disappointment! It was as if she scribbled the last few pages in the car on the way to dropping off the manuscript. I really couldn't believe how poor an ending it was. Grimes has done and can do better.

Rating:
Summary: A disjointed effort
Review: I liked the earlier Hotel Paradise, apart from the deliberately obscure ending. This novel, featuring the same locale and at least one character, was disappointing in a different way. It reads like a first draft, and although the ending is understandable, there are a lot of unanswered questions left pending, particularly about the motivations of the various characters.

Rating:
Summary: A disjointed effort
Review: I liked the earlier Hotel Paradise, apart from the deliberately obscure ending. This novel, featuring the same locale and at least one character, was disappointing in a different way. It reads like a first draft, and although the ending is understandable, there are a lot of unanswered questions left pending, particularly about the motivations of the various characters.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely disappointing
Review: My first Martha Grimes mystery, and I expected much more from what others told me about this author. The plot was confusing, there were too many people with names like Bubba drinking too many Buds. Unless this is very different from her usual style, I wouldn't read her again.

Rating:
Summary: A pleasant non-masterpiece
Review: This is a standard mystery/suspense novel with one or two diverting ideas. Maude, the heroine, has some quirky thoughts which she tries to share with sheriff Sam. But Sam is a standard linear-thinking male who finds Maude's ideas perplexing. Their conversations toward the begininning of the book were for me the most interesting part of the novel. Unfortunately, once the action starts, Grimes pretty much drops the conversational sparring between Maude and Sam. This is just one example if the disjointedness mentioned by a previous reviewer. Many pages of the novel seem mostly unrelated to the mystery itself. So it is not a well-constructed mystery, but it is pleasant enough, with no obvious giveaway of the ultimate solution. It ends with one of those annoying long speeches by the guilty party, explaining to the intended final victim just how all the previous murders had been committed, and speaking just long enough for the cavalry to arrive. But this one has a slightly different twist to it. If you're a Grimes fan or just looking for a lazy way to pass some time, this is worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: A pleasant non-masterpiece
Review: This is a standard mystery/suspense novel with one or two diverting ideas. Maude, the heroine, has some quirky thoughts which she tries to share with sheriff Sam. But Sam is a standard linear-thinking male who finds Maude's ideas perplexing. Their conversations toward the begininning of the book were for me the most interesting part of the novel. Unfortunately, once the action starts, Grimes pretty much drops the conversational sparring between Maude and Sam. This is just one example if the disjointedness mentioned by a previous reviewer. Many pages of the novel seem mostly unrelated to the mystery itself. So it is not a well-constructed mystery, but it is pleasant enough, with no obvious giveaway of the ultimate solution. It ends with one of those annoying long speeches by the guilty party, explaining to the intended final victim just how all the previous murders had been committed, and speaking just long enough for the cavalry to arrive. But this one has a slightly different twist to it. If you're a Grimes fan or just looking for a lazy way to pass some time, this is worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Dysfunctional
Review: This was the first book (may well be the last) that I have read by Ms. Grimes and the title of my review pretty well sums up the entire book--dysfunctional. The book gets off to an extremely slow start and the slow beginning sets the plodding pace of the entire book. Within this book, there does not appear to be a single, solitary character that is not psychotic in one aspect or another; every individual seems to be suffering a mental imbalance in one way or another. Also, she really doesn't 'flesh out' her characters in any other way except for their aberrations and as societal misfits. The entire book seemed to be disjointed. It was as if every time Ms. Grimes was interrupted while writing, she would lose her train of thought and have to start off from a new line of thought when she could begin again. As for her chosen killer psychopath, very little was written to develop the killer's character; and there was a failure to demonstrate the motivation of the killer. Although the killer was depicted as being in more or less of a mesmerized state during the killing process, at least one murder was out of character as it definitely required forethought and planning ahead for the provision of an alibi during the time of the killing. Another failure in this book was the sporadic insertion of expletives and obscenities throughout the book for no apparent reason other than a lack of the english language to be able to adequately express herself. It seemed as if not one character in her book was able to speak without using an obscenity or two. This is not so in actual life.

This is one book that, even though I bought it at a greatly reduced price, I rue having purchased it at all. About the only thing that this book is fit for is to be shredded and used as mulch in my flower garden; but I am not even certain it will be any good for that. If I may suggest, if you have money to spend on a book, make another choice other than this book or just save your money and your time.