Rating: 
Summary: A welcome but ultimately preachy sequel
Review: Martha Grimes has written sophisticated, character driven plots with smoky atmospheres in the past. Books like her Lamorna Wink were back to basics in the Richard Jury mystery series and of the "can't put it down" variety. They wove you into a web of plot, people and places that were easily seductive to the mystery buff. And, highly enjoyable.
However, her latest, The Grave Maurice, is a true disappointment. While it does tie up loose ends left in her prior book, the sloppy Blue Last, it is at times dull and extremely preachy. While one does support her animal rights beliefs, this book uses the plot to almost shove them down readers' throats. It makes the new book, although highly anticipated, an eventual disappointment. There are again loose ends that don't make sense, and Richard Jury and Melrose Plant, two of the best characters ever written in mystery fiction in my estimatation, are themselves dull and slow the plot. Let's hope her future books return to her wonderful, web-weaving atmospheres and that she pays more attention to plot details.
Rating: 
Summary: Predominantly for Martha Grimes¿ fans
Review: Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury lies in the hospital recovering from the near fatal shooting (see THE BLUE LAST) that left him in a coma. As he slowly begins to feel a little better, Richard is bored with inactivity, needs distraction, and struggles to ignore his starchy nurse.Richard's assistant Melrose Plant provides the recuperating cop with a juicy tidbit that he overheard in the Grave Maurice Pub involving the daughter of the doctor tending to the injured law enforcement official. Two female patrons were discussing the disappearance of fifteen year old Nell Ryder and her family's valuable thoroughbred Aqueduct. The case of the teen's disappearance is officially cold, but Richard and Melrose begin discussing it. Soon the latter begins investigating the vanishing under Richard's bedside direction. The latest Jury police procedural depends too much on coincidence and horse breeding than on hard core investigative skills, but fans of the series will enjoy seeing the star returning to his feisty self. Though the mystery is a bit weak as Jury novels go, Melrose and Nurse Bell make the tale fun for readers with their radically different personalities playing the stage through Richard. Predominantly for Martha Grimes' fans, THE GRAVE MAURICE is overall an entertaining tale, just a pint short of what the audience expects from this talented author. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Unable to stop reading
Review: From the moment I started reading The Grave Maurice
I was unable to put it down unless outside circumstances
forced me to. Martha Grimes has a way of writing about characters that
always makes me care about them. I understand the
adults because there is always some aspect of me
in each one of them. And when she writes about
children, it is a delight.
It was wonderful to revisit with Jury and his friends.
If I were a going to be a writer, I would study
all of Martha Grimes books. She has a way of
making all the things she describes a part of the
story. Not all details advance the story, but in
her hands, the detail is always a part of the story.
It is so easy to visualize what she is writing about.
I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A Grave Failure
Review: I love Martha Grimes I went straight out and bought this book and was so disappointed. The many plots drag and the usual characters are less than sprite. Even Melrose is lacking in his usual charm. And after leading the story for the first half of the book, she just drops and forgets about him. Jury who I have never found that charming makes his usual depressing mistakes. Jury has seen his day, it's time Melrose had his chance!!!
Rating:
Summary: The Grave Mistake
Review: I have read most of Martha Grimes' books. The End of the Pier remains one of my all-time favorites. This offering, however, is pathetic. After the cliff-hanging end of the last Richard Jury book we find Jury alive and surprisingly well after being shot three times. He is, in fact, well enough to go to bed with one of the suspects, his injuries being no impediment to sexual prowess. There is kidnapping, horse-napping, rape, murder; comic relief provided by a hermit; the usual gang hanging out at the Jack and Hammer; and a bizarre connection to Premarin, the estrogen replacement pharmaceutical produced from pregnant mare's urine. The book does not hang together, is not well plotted, is difficult to follow, and is not worthy of Mz.Grimes usual workmanship.
Rating:
Summary: Where was her editor?
Review: First let me say that I am a huge fan of Martha Grimes--both the Richard Jury mysteries and her other novels. I love the characters she has constructed in the Jury series. But this was just plain awful. The writing style could almost be described as meandering and disjointed--not good in a mystery with a complicated plot. There are passages that I have read over and over again, and about the meaning of which I still remain confused. I agree with other reviewers that while certain elements of the story --investments, horse racing, premarin production, etc.--were intriguing, they involved too many events that defied credibility. I also found it disturbing and incredible that every male in this novel seemed to be obsessed, sexually, with a seventeen year old female. All but one of these male characters was old enough to be her father or grandfather. It almost seems as if this was a first draft that needed re-working and polishing. Disappointing!
Rating:
Summary: Whoa Nellie!
Review: I've dipped in and out of the Richard Jury series over the years, and generally I've found Martha Grimes' books to be entertaining and well-written -- though not perfect. By contrast, "Grave Maurice" is gravely flawed. How in the world could the mere photograph of a 15-year-old girl, Nell Ryder, engender such intense feelings of yearning and passion in every grown man who sees it? When Nell appears in the flesh, she's described as lucent and luminous but actually seems one-dimensional in the extreme. Meanwhile, the plot is awash in coincidences that rob it of honesty. Face it: Melrose Plant is the one decent character -- give him his own series, Martha, and give handsome Richard Jury's bullet-riddled, bed-hopping body a little rest.
Rating:
Summary: Not her best
Review: I have read all her books. Obviously, I love her writing. But I have real problems with this one. Two incredible plot contrivances and a horrific ending really spoiled this brew for me.
Still, it's Martha Grimes, one of the best, most erudite mystery writers of our time. I guess everybody has to throw in a stinker from time to time.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful, thought provoking book
Review: This is a book which grabs your attention from the beginning. I had avoided it because I thought the subject matter would bother me. I can't stand to read about animals in pain. But I managed to persevere and really enjoyed it. I have to confess that I hated the ending, but I could see how it fit the book. I have looked up Premarin on the internet. It is as awful as portrayed in the book. Humans are anything but, I'm afraid.
Rating:
Summary: The Grave Mistake
Review: A well meaning friend bought me The Grave Maurice in anticipation of my wanting a good read for a summer holiday. It was a grave mistake, not on the part of my friend, but on the part of Miss Grimes. Like one reviewer, I was tempted to lay fault on the editors, but throwing it back over the transom for a complete rewrite (or outright rejection) was probably not an option.
Not being a Martha Grimes fan coming into this read, my beak was well wetted for a good, fast paced, and satisfing read that hinted at topics interesting to me: race horses and the market. The Grave Maurice reads more like a bundle of "notes for future novels" than the final *well crafted* novel I expected. There are a few moments of close focus, but unfortunately these are rewarded with banal conversations, usually about food. What is worse, aside from the over-frequent references to Little Chefs, a debateable but established pinnacle of roadside Englishness, there is nothing quintessentially English about the dialogues and interactions. The characters are intrusive, explain themselves or their actions uninvited, and in short, reflect little reserve and even less depth of personality. For the sake of brevity, I'll forgo comment on the thick handed treatment of the market related bits. Finally, as to the story itself, by page 207 (paperback), I'm still not quite sure which crime will be the one warranting the skills of a Scotland Yard detective. Not a good sign. And not a good sign when I notice myself speed reading just to finish the book "on principle". I'm not worried at all that I'll miss something in this scatter-brained mess.
As an aside, I wouldn't hold the author's American origins at fault, as Deborah Crombie, a mystery writer with Texas origins, more than amply demonstrates authorial skill, refined attentiveness to anglophile atmosphere, and most importantly, editorial craft, in her "English mysteries". If you haven't read Miss Crombie's books, do yourself, or your vacationing friends, a grave favor and head over there instead.
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