Rating: 
Summary: Incredible! You're nuts, if you don't love it!
Review: As with all of Deaver's books, I was at the edge of my seat from beginning to end. I felt it was realistic and believable. I don't understand how many other readers felt otherwise. As a rebuttal to some of the other reviews, I'd like to address a couple of points. The use of the word "STOAT" was only used by one character, a deaf teacher, and her young charges simply followed her lead. I am sure a deaf person could sign the word 'stoat.' I don't feel that the use of the word should detract from an otherwise pleasant read. As far as the other reader saying that all the hostages did was cry was also incorrect. There were strong sympathetic hostages (Susan, Kielle, and Shannon), and the others were simply young and scared. To think that they shouldn't be scared under the circumstances, is like asking for fantasy instead of reality. I'd recommend this book to anyone, and let them judge for themselves regarding the above. Jeffery Deaver has never come close to disappointing me, and I'll read anything he writes!
Rating: 
Summary: Nerve wrecking
Review: I found this book to be very intense and nerve wrecking. Deaver keeps the reader at the edge of their seat (is that only a movie watching term?) and eager to find out what happens next.I liked the general ending a lot (the last 50 pages), but the very ending seemed kind of far fetched - meaning the way Deaver concludes the story of the bad guys. Also, the romance between the deaf assistant teacher and the negiotiator was beyond stupid and should have been left out.
Rating:
Summary: Taut suspense!
Review: I have enjoyed every Jeffery Deaver book I've read, so I ordered this one on a whim. I'm glad I did--it's a real page-turner. If you've read some of the other reviews, you know the basic story--deaf girls being held hostage by bad guys. Mr. Deaver draws his characters well, and each one has strengths and weaknesses. Some of the hostages are survivors because they're always on the lookout for ways to survive, while others give up without a fight. The bad guys are really bad but the good guys are surprisingly normal. There are no supermen in the story, only regular people responding to a bad situation as best they can. And just when you think it's safe to breathe again, the suspense builds anew. That's what makes Jeffery Deaver's books so extraordinary. Sometimes I get the feeling Lincoln Rhyme is a little too superhuman, but all of Deaver's books are like intricately woven tapestries that tell stories with richly colored detail.
Rating:
Summary: Taut suspense!
Review: I have enjoyed every Jeffery Deaver book I've read, so I ordered this one on a whim. I'm glad I did--it's a real page-turner. If you've read some of the other reviews, you know the basic story--deaf girls being held hostage by bad guys. Mr. Deaver draws his characters well, and each one has strengths and weaknesses. Some of the hostages are survivors because they're always on the lookout for ways to survive, while others give up without a fight. The bad guys are really bad but the good guys are surprisingly normal. There are no supermen in the story, only regular people responding to a bad situation as best they can. And just when you think it's safe to breathe again, the suspense builds anew. That's what makes Jeffery Deaver's books so extraordinary. Sometimes I get the feeling Lincoln Rhyme is a little too superhuman, but all of Deaver's books are like intricately woven tapestries that tell stories with richly colored detail.
Rating:
Summary: top ten list
Review: I read roughly 90 books per year, all fiction, and generally in the same genre, and this novel has remained on my top ten list for many years. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I found it to be gripping from cover to cover, and could easily have stayed up all night in order to read it in one sitting. Despite this being one of his "early works", I still believe it to be his best. He manages to produce real fear and suspense without cheap thrills and gore. The characters are well drawn, and easily understood and related to. And hey! My wife loved it too. We keep a copy in our "library" to loan out to friends, and probably always will. We don't typically read a book twice, but we will both do so with this one. Guaranteed. Hey, and it's really cheap!
Rating: 
Summary: Plodding, Not Worth the Effort to Read!
Review: I'm a big fan of Jeffrey Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series and eagerly picked up A Maiden's Grave. Unfortunately, this novel simply isn't the same calibre of the Rhyme books. The plot involves the kidnapping of several young deaf girls who are held hostage at an old slaughterhouse in Kansas. The main character in the book is Arthur Potter, an FBI hostage negotiator; he's accompanied by the standard techno-geek, the mousey assistant who faithfully logs info on the bad guys, and the stunningly gorgeous ex-model assistant Angie. For fans of the Rhyme series, you'll recognize this Amelia Sachs-clone immediately...the only change is the hair color. The villains are interesting, but not enough is shared about them to keep this reader interested. Most of the book is spent slogging through countless scenes of tech-talk, political in-fighting, and the developing "relationship" between one of the deaf women and the hostage negotiator. This plotline alone strains the credibility of the book. All in all, it appears that Deaver has done his research, but the plot is hackneyed and too drawn out -- I've even lost count of the number of times the hostage negotiation team "bursts into applause" at the slightest "accomplishment" of the hero, Potter. If you like police procedurals, read A Maiden's Grave. If you want an engaging novel, you'd be better off reading the Lincoln Rhyme series. And for the ultimate hostage negotiation novel, check out Robert Crais' "Hostage" -- that was a phenomenal read!
Rating:
Summary: Deaver Holds Readers Hostage: Film @ 11.
Review: I've spent this past spring and summer reading, among other things, Jeffrey Deaver's suspense novels. Having finished A MAIDEN'S GRAVE last evening, I'd like to share a few impressions: If you have to go to work early in the morning, do not read this novel at night. If the fear of what will happen to the next hostage doesn't keep you up, sheer interest will. Atmospheric at the threshhold of tolerance, sharply etched characters, and a plausible plot join forces to create a novel that's destined to stay on the shelves for years to come. The battle of wits between Art Potter, the dean of FBI negotiators, and the leader of the trio of escaped convicts who've kidnapped a busload of deaf students and teachers and holding them hostage at an abandoned slaughterhouse, is one of the most harrowing on record. Just when you think the conflict has been played out, Deaver turns the knob back up to ten and the game begins all over again. My two problems with this book: That the lead bad guy, Lou Handy, wasn't delineated well enough, and his accomplices mere cardboard cutouts. However, Deaver handles expository material skillfully and the multiple POVs that the story requires, always a risky venture, is equally satisfying because of the demands that they place on the author. Problem #2: The blossoming romance between Arthur Potter, a world-weary middle aged widower and Melanie Charrol, the deaf teacher who opposes Lou Handy and his henchmen, a romance based on only one glimpse and a mouthed message between the two, is not only implausible, it's downright pathetic. However, equally as good as THE BONE COLLECTOR, A MAIDEN'S GRAVE is another Deaver book that deserves a sequel.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good... but not the best for Deaver
Review: I, like most Deaver fans, started out with the Lincoln Rhyme series books and got addicted. I have also read a lot of other books by Jeffery Deaver outside that series and have thoroughly enjoyed them all... until I started reading A Maiden's Grave. The first 50-70 pages or so are so crammed with vital information about each and every person involved in the story that I found myself having to look back at the beginning to remember who was who. I understand that each character needs to be introduced within the first couple of chapters, but in this one, the hostage takers have nicknames and the negotiating teams can't decide whether they are going to call each other by the first name or their last.
The story itself is very interesting and I learned a lot about hostage situations and what they involve. One of Deavers best attributes is that he does a lot of research about everything he writes about which gives a sense of confidence that you know he's not stretching to truth to make his story better.
Once you figure out who everyone is and the stage is set for the negotiating, the book gets very good and I couldn't put it down. The only other thing I didn't really like about A Maiden's Grave was that I found it to be very predictable. Even the twists and turns that Deaver is so popular for I saw coming from a mile away.
Rating:
Summary: gripping drama with a great plot twist at the end
Review: In "A Maiden's Grave" Jeffery deaver spins an excellent tale of the hi-jacking of a school bus carrying 7 deaf girls to Topeka. The three kidnappers are escaped convicts who have already murdered two people. The group is chased into an abandoned packing plant where negotiations with FBI agent Arthur Potter begin. The author does a nice job of weaving all the subplots of the negotiation process together. The book is well written and is quite believable except for a lapse in logic at the plot twist. I enjoyed this novel more than any I've read in quite a while. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterful Novel That Cannot Be Missed
Review: It is a simultaneous blessing and curse that more people have probably seen the film adaptation of Jeffery Deaver's novel A MAIDEN'S GRAVE than have read the book. This is not unusual; in a less harried age viewers would, I think, be more likely to seek out the novel that was the subject matter of the "Based on the novel" tag that would come appended to the beginning, or end, of a film they enjoyed. This is unfortunate; while A MAIDEN'S GRAVE was a fine film adaptation, there is nothing that can compare to climbing into the lounge chair, cracking the binding on this book, and then restricting movement for the next several hours to the eye, the, hand, and the mind. A MAIDEN'S GRAVE and PRAYING FOR SLEEP are the two novels that really, really "did it" for Deaver; they set the tone for his later books, particularly the Lincoln Rhyme novels, which have brought him the fame, fortune and notoriety that he so long deserved and that was so late in forthcoming. THE MAIDEN'S GRAVE tells a story over the course of 400-plus pages (in the mass market paperback edition) and a little over 18 hours that contains all of those elements that make a Deaver book a DEAVER BOOK: sleights of hand, plot twists, and a suspense level that is ratcheted upward every page or two. Oh, one other thing. Deaver has become well known for building his novels around topics that you want to know more about but have never had the time to delve into. The Man very kindly does the research for you and drops factoids here and there, but never gratuitously. So it is that when, in A MAIDEN'S GRAVE, a school bus carrying students from a school for the hearing impaired is hijacked by a trio of murderous escaped convicts, the reader learns much more than sign language. There are some pretty ferocious political and cultural differences within the hearing-impaired community, and even some class differences based on impairment etiology. Deaver does a masterful job of bringing these out within the subtext of his story, and making them matter as his story unfolds, without tearing and straining at the plot fabric. That one fact alone would make A MAIDEN'S GRAVE a masterful work. But...but...there is a lot more to this novel than the hearing-impaired subtext. When it is learned that the bus has been hijacked, and the students kidnapped and held hostage, the politics involved in the containing and resolving of the situation have enough plot lines for an entirely separate novel. Arthur Potter is the FBI's very best point man in the area of hostage negotiation. Potter approaches every hostage situation as a homicide in progress; those responsible must be apprehended and the damage contained. The jurisdictional disputes among federal, state, and local authorities, even when the line of authority is at least theoretically clear, function more to endanger rather than protect the hostages. What is so remarkable, however, is Deaver's ability, in the midst of jurisdictional chaos, to plausibly create an improbable love affair from afar between Potter and Melanie Charrol. Charrol is a teacher of the hearing-impaired, and one of the hostages. Though she and Potter have never met, and have seen each other only from a fleeting distance, they begin, incredibly, to work together to resolve the situation and to save themselves --- and each other. The result is a tale of suspense and, yes, romance, that is somehow rendered believable. I doubt that anyone but Deaver could ever carry it off. Whether you have seen the film version of A MAIDEN'S GRAVE on HBO or not, the novel, and the reading experience, are not to missed. It is a work to be read, reread, and shared. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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