The Grave Maurice by Martha Grimes: A review

The Grave Maurice (Richard Jury Mysteries 18)

The Grave Maurice by Martha Grimes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book started out as a sort of homage to Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, sometimes referred to as the best mystery ever written. Like the protagonist in that book, we find Superintendent Richard Jury laid up in a hospital bed and unable to pursue his usual occupation. He needs distraction. Sergeant Wiggins brings him Tey's book to read and his doctor provides him with a much more current mystery.

When last we saw Jury (in The Blue Last) he was lying grievously wounded on a dock. He was found there by a dog and his boy and by his friend Melrose Plant. His life was saved and now he's in recovery, soon to be released. But in the meantime, his mind needs something to occupy it.

His surgeon catches his interest with a mystery from his own life. Two years earlier, his fifteen-year-old daughter had vanished without a trace along with a champion thoroughbred that she was tending at her grandfather's stud farm. Both the horse and the girl disappeared from the barn one night and no one has seen them since.

Jury reviews the known facts of the case and determines to investigate. He's not cleared to return to duty and so he will have some time to look into the matter unofficially.

While still in the hospital, he sends his friend Plant to the stud farm to reconnoiter the place and find out what he can. Melrose arrives to find the local police already there. The body of a woman has been found on one of the training tracks. Everyone at the farm claims not to recognize the woman. How did she happen to end up on that track?

Plant's excuse for going to the farm in the first place is to pretend that he's interested in buying a horse. As these things usually turn out when Melrose Plant is involved, he winds up actually buying a horse. A very expensive stallion.

Once Jury is released from the hospital, he heads to Northampton to convalesce at Plant's home and then he begins his own investigation into the girl's disappearance. Could it somehow be related to the murder of the woman who was found on the training track? There are few clues and Jury finds that he must attempt to piece together tiny bits of information and connections in order to try to get a clear picture of what has happened.

Martha Grimes is up to one of her usual twisting and turning plots in this book. It becomes a rather dark story as we get further into it, involving the abuse of the abducted girl and the abuse of pregnant mares kept for the production of their urine that is used in making the hormone replacement therapy drug Premarin. Grimes paints an all too vivid picture of the lives of the poor mares that are kept tied up and without a chance to exercise, their every drop of urine collected. The reader intuits that this is not going to end happily. And it doesn't.

But (spoiler alert) at least the mares survive and move on to green pastures.

View all my reviews

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

Search This Blog