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Rating: 
Summary: Great way to meet the characters in the Richard Jury series
Review: For those of you who, like me, discovered Martha Grimes when she was well into her series of books featuring Richard Jury, I highly recommend this first in the series. The well plotted, if somewhat overly complex story is a good read, but the real fun is in meeting Melrose Plant, Superintendent Racer (sans cat), Marshall Trueblood, Vivian and Little Pid for the first time. There is an added bonus in that one of the characters is an expert on the history of the strange and exotic names of English country inns. As the afficianado knows, Ms. Grimes has used these names to good effect as titles for the books in her Jury series
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Summary: A Must For The Grimes Collector
Review: I must have read 5 or 6 Richard Jury Mysteries before I came into a copy of ...Load Of Mischief. This, being her first, is a must for fans of Martha Grimes. This is where her reoccurent characters meet! It's a wonderful, weaving mystery, filled with webs of deception and her marvelous blend of humor. This is a must mystery!
Rating: 
Summary: Satisfying Entertainment
Review: I've read most of the Richard Jury novels, and it was a real treat to read the first in the series where all the characters are introduced. A number of the characters who later become a bit frozen in their stereotype behaviour are very real in this book-- I think particularly of Vivian and Trueblood-- and it's worth reading if you're a fan just for those points alone. When a series of grisly murders shocks the town of Long Piddleton, Richard Jury of Scotland Yard is sent to investigate. It becomes clear all-too-soon that these were not the acts of a stranger and the small town is in the grip of suspicion and fear as the death toll continues to rise. A satisfying whodunnit that keeps the pages turning.
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Summary: The First Richard Jury Novel!
Review: Lately it seems when I've started reading a mystery series I've started in the middle or at the end of things. I was quite pleased when I came across this book, helpfully labelled "The First Richard Jury Novel!", and decided to turn over two new leaves: starting a new series and beginning at the beginning for a change. I found the first couple chapters a bit of tough sledding. Grimes, an American author intent on establishing the setting and tone of an "English Mystery" lays on the Anglicized idioms a bit thick. By about a third of the way through, though, either she laid off or I started to roll with it because I was fully into the story at that point. If you've read her later books, you can probably eliminate quite a few of the suspects on the grounds that they show up later with no mention of being homicidal maniacs. As a first-time-reader I spent a lot of time guessing whodunit (or, rather, hoping someone hadn't done it - "Oh, don't let it be him" and "Oh, don't let it be her"). The ending relies on the knowledge of a bit of English geographic trivia (well, I suppose it's not trivial to the people who live there), but there are a few other clues that savvy sleuths can use to get the job done just as well. While Richard Jury isn't a Poirot, Wimsey, or Dalgliesh (at least not in his first outing), he still is a first-rate literary creation. If you're looking to start a new series of detective fiction, this is a good place to begin. After the first book, I know I'm hooked.
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