Rating: 
Summary: Gripping!
Review: Jeffrey Deaver's mind is an interesting place. I'm not sure I would want his dreams after reading this book and The Devil's Teardrop. I also know that I will always look at a hostage situation with much more insight and understanding as a result of having spent 419 pages with the FBI's top negotiator, Arthur Potter. The bad guys are really bad. One of them (Handy) is really deviously clever. You don't ever want to be held hostage by him. The plot twists and turns as deadlines arrive and hostages are in peril, not only from their captors, but from some of the misguided politicians and law enforcement folks on the good guys side. Through all of the plot changes, Art Potter keeps his eye on the target. And just when you thought it was over...it isn't. If you are looking for an author to keep your interest and attention...Mr. Deaver is your man.
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: Great thriller!
Review: There are many novels written with kidnapped children as their central story line, but this book certainly leads the pack and stands out as a gut wrenching thriller. A Maiden's Grave is an interesting take on hostage negotiations and Deaver really makes it work. You feel the tension the hostages feel and the pressure the negotiator goes through. You can feel the terror and bravery of the characters. It is so wonderfully well written that the story is almost palpable. I look forward to reading more books written by this author. Great thriller...
Rating:
Summary: Deaver Digs Deep
Review: Jeffrey Deaver is well recognized for his visciously violent mind. And the ability to dig deep from within and transfer those thoughts to paper has been rewarded with two Edgar nominations. I just read the Amazon review he did with Barrie, and am anticipating his computer thriller presently being molded. As he stated, "Noone will ever go on-line again after reading this one". In, "A Maiden's Grave", eight deaf girls and their teacher are pulled off a school bus along a wheatlined Kansas road. They are held hostage in an abandoned slaughterhouse by escaped murderer, Lou Handy, and two fellow inmates. The threat--to kill one hostage an hour unless demands are met. Enter Arthur Potter, the FBI's senior hostage negotiator. Killer Lou Handy may just be Potter's downfall. This book moves like an out of control train. Of course with Mr. Deaver, you never know where those solid serpentine tracks will take you. Tick-tock Tick-tock--do not miss this emotional crime novel. other reading suggestions: "The Devils Teardrop" by Jeffrey Deaver and "The Lions Game" by Nelson DeMille I appreciate your interest & comments--CDS
Rating:
Summary: Another good story with unbelievable detail...
Review: In the past month I have become the number 1 Deaver fan. I have read every book I've been able to get a hand on. A maiden's grave is another great novel by Deaver. Its unbelievable to read with intricate detail how a hostage situation is supposed to be handled. This novel makes you think about how you would react in that type of situation, and makes you realize that although your life is certainly very valuable to you it is not neccessarily as valuable to others, and not just the bad guys. After reading this novel you'll think twice about who the good guys really are because the people you think are trying to help you are maybe just trying to help themselves. As with other Deaver novels the main situation is resolved with about forty or fifty pages left and that is when the fun starts. With Deavers novels you read the whole novel waiting to get to the final fifty pages because that is really when the novel turns from good to great. In the last fifty pages you always find something you overlooked but was there the whole time. This book has a great heroine in Melanie and you will be cheering for her during the novel particularly at the surprising end when you will applaud that for once the ending is exactly the retribution you would have hoped for. There is one setback I should mention, this is the first Deaver novel where I found at least some of the plot twists to be predictable. For once I actually knew what was going to happen. But this aside the book is very good and you will find it very entertaining and aside from a few details it is unpredictable, which is the Deaver trademark.
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: 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: Non-stop entertainment
Review: This nail biter of a thriller involves a hijacked schoolbus carrying eight deaf school children and two teachers. Sound familiar? Mary Willis Walker's "Under the Beetle's Cellar" develops a very similar premise. Both books even include an asthmatic among the kidnapped children.
But in Deaver's skillful hands, the story works again. The two protagonists are Arthur Potter, senior FBI negotiator, nearing retirement, and Melanie Charrol, a young, timid deaf teacher whose lonely passion is music. The three kidnappers are prison escapees who have already killed three people before holing up in an abandoned slaughterhouse with the terrified hostages. Potter works against time to get inside the head of their leader, Lou Handy, and derail his threat to kill one hostage every hour until his demands are met. Meanwhile, state officials have their own agenda, as does the press, and their machinations ratchet up the suspense in several different directions. And, inside, Melanie fights her fears, holding onto an image of Potter (who she has glimpsed outside) as inspiration, and works feverishly to save at least a few of the girls. Deaver's characterizations - the outbursts of rebellion and tears among the children, the gleeful coldbloodedness of Handy, Potter's feverish analysis and risky gambles, Melanie's terrified bravery - hurtle the plot forward, while the slaughterhouse atmosphere is dank and cold, and the action is non-stop, right up to a couple of switch-back twists at the end.
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: 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.
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