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    The Deer Leap
    The Deer Leap
    The Deer Leap
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Deer Leap

    Written by Martha Grimes

    Narrated by Steve West

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    In this Richard Jury adventure, Martha Grimes takes listeners to Ashdown Dean, a little English village where animals are dying in a series of seemingly innocuous accidents. While the puzzling deaths of village pets may raise some idle gossip over a pint or two at the Deer Leap, the village pub, this hardly seems a case for Superintendent Jury of Scotland yard. Nor does it seem much of a challenge for the combined deductive powers of Jury and Melrose, the affable former Earl of Caverness.
    It is his mystery writing-writing, amethyst-eyed friend, Polly Praed, who drags Plant and Jury to Ashdown Dean. The impatient Polly, having yanked open a call box in the pouring rain, is ill prepared for what lands at her feet. The now-deadly case is cause for calling in Scotland Yard.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateSep 24, 2013
    ISBN9781442363151
    Author

    Martha Grimes

    Bestselling author Martha Grimes is the author of more than thirty books, including twenty-two Richard Jury mysteries. She is also the author of Double Double, a dual memoir of alcoholism written with her son. The winner of the 2012 Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award, Grimes lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

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    Reviews for The Deer Leap

    4/5

    238 ratings12 reviews

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    • 3/5
      what!!?? what happened? What happened! I guess I will never know
    • 3/5
      Did not like the ending. Otherwise enjoyed old characters and new and dialogue. Especially Jury’s neighbors.
    • 4/5
      The ending is open for interpretation and I'm not thrilled with that. Feels different from her other books; she has definitely steered away from the light-hearted quirky cozys with which I am familiar. It also felt as though Jury was acting out of character with a witness.
    • 5/5
      Mystery writer, Polly Praed is in Ashdown Dean, trying to find an idea or motivation for the book her editor thinks she is working on and is on deadline for. What she finds is a phone booth with a dead lady who falls out when Polly opens the door.Polly is friends with Melrose Plant and Richard Jury, so winds up calling Melrose about the dead woman. In turn, Melrose calls Jury about it and both men come to Polly’s rescue.What they find, besides the dead woman, is a mystery of pet deaths and an aging dowager whose ward lives with her. The ward, Carrie Fleet, is an independent sort with a passion for animals. She also seems to know nothing of her past as a small child. Neither, does the dowager.There is a lab nearby that uses animals for experiments — a practice that goes against Carries beliefs. Carrie wants to somehow shut down the facility.As Jury is trying to help solve the murder of the lady in the phone box, he is finding possible ties between the pet deaths and also possible links to Carrie’s past history.The ending was a stunner for me, but nevertheless, I enjoyed reading the book.
    • 3/5
      Melrose Plant and Richard Jury meet Carrie Fleet, a 15-year-old animal rescuer as villagers in Ashdown Dean die mysteriously. Carrie aids Plant and Jury in the search for the village killer. Polly Praed, a noted mystery writer, convinces Plant and Jury to come to the village when she finds the first corpse. What prompts these killings and why is Carrie in the middle of everything? Grimes inserts her view on animal testing within the confine of a lab and on animal cruelty. New characters jump into the circle, such as the Baroness, Sebastian Grimsdale, and the Brindles. The plight of Carrie Fleet reminds me of Victor Hugo’s, Les Misérables. Grimes, like Louise Penny, describes wonderful characters and stunning setting.
    • 5/5
      pets, family-dynamics, law-enforcement, suspense, friendship -----.The characters are clear and interesting, the police work is good on the part of Sgt Wiggins and highly imaginative on Jury's part, the suspense grows as the tale moves along. The ending is sad. 'Nuf said. Steve West did a fine job as narrator.
    • 3/5
      Excellent read, incredibly crappy and unclear ending. Still a fan of Jury and Plant, and Jury's hypochondriac sidekick Wiggins. When some local animals end up dead, and a dead busybody falls out of a phone book on top of Polly Praed, she calls Melrose to help her out, knowing that he'd call Superintendent Jury. Jury comes to town and another busybody ends up dead, something is clearly up. Local resident and amnesiac Carrie Fleet, spends her days keeping company with the Baroness and looking out for people abusing animals. Somehow Carrie's unknown past is intersecting with the present.
    • 3/5
      Detective Inspector Richard Jury might have solved a case sooner and saved a life or two if he'd kept his pants zipped. Total bummer, though well written as always.
    • 4/5
      I like Grimes' quirky but believable characters including the ever present precocious child. The ending of this one is a problem. I had to go back and reread parts in order to understand how it was solved.
    • 4/5
      This book is a good read with Inspector Jury, Melville Plant and the usual gang trying to solve a series of animal murders and the murder of several people in a small town. I love Ms. Grimes and her take on life in the English countryside.
    • 3/5
      I'm just not Martha Grimes's reader (except for Foul Matter, which is so different from the Richard Jury mysteries it could be a different author note: I just checked the Amazon reviews for Foul Matter, and wouldn't you know it--it got terrible reviews. And yet it's the only Martha Grimes book I actually liked.). *sigh* Yet another small English town that appears to be stuck in a cross between 1800 and 1950 (it was written & presumably takes place in 1985). Yet another young girl who roams around the town, completely independently, and who people tend to defer to. I suppose the mystery was okay, but it's tending to blur with the one in the Regency I read before this one, as both have similar historical tones, and both involve the mysterious history of a young girl who's in danger. Gotta say, it was better done in the Regency. Bah.
    • 5/5
      Seventh in the Richard Jury series.Ashdown Dean. A small village where nothing much happens outside of the usual small-town, petty irritations and gossip. Polly Praed, author of best-selling trash mysteries, is wrestling with writer's block. Along with her cat Barney, she undertakes a pilgrimage of sorts, visiting the towns and villages where such literary giants as Chaucer, Henry James, and Jane Austen lived and wrote their masterpieces, hoping for some flash of inspiration that will unblock her own imagination.Instead, she finds herself in Ashdown Dean at a terrible B & B, with Barney missing. Because of her near pathological shyness, she decides to dump the whole problem on the one person with whom she feels comfortable--Melrose Plant. Accordingly, she searches out a phone booth, and waits interminably for the woman inside, Una Quick, to finish. Una is indeed finished--dead! Convinced that the woman has been murdered, Polly phones Plant in a panic, and insists that Melrose get Jury as well as himself to Ashdean Down.All arrive--to find a subdued Polly. The official cause of death has been determined to be heart failure, for a woman with a known, serious heart condition.But that doesn't mean that there aren't puzzling circumstances. Too much has happened; two dogs and a cat have died suddenly within a period of days, including Una's dog Pepper. Even Barney has a close call, being nearly set on fire by two sadistic boys in the village. Barney, however, is lucky--a savior in the form of 15 year old animal enthusiast, Carrie Fleet, threatens the boys with a .410 shotgun and rescues Barney. Carrie spends her time rescuing and nursing all sorts of animals, from a New Forest pony to a badger to a Lab hit by a truck to birds, always accompanied by her 3-legged dog, Bingo. Carrie lives with her benefactress, the Baroness Regina La Notre whom Carrie met under rather unusual circumstances. Carrie seems to have no past earlier than age 8, when the Brindles, a larcenous London couple, found her wandering around with a nasty head wound and no memory of who she was or where she came from. Carrie's relationship with the baroness protects her from the wrath of the law in the form of Constable Pasco as she is not hesitant in bending whatever rules she needs to on her missions of rescue. In particular, she and Sebastian Grimsdale, the local Master of Fox Hounds, are in constant conflict over Grimsdale's often illegal methods of securing foxes for the local hunt.Before too long, however, Jury and Wiggens are needed as the wife of the owner of a local inn, The Deer Leap, is found dead, too, under suspicious circumstances. While there seems to be a plausible explanation, there just simply has been too much death, both of pets and human beings, to be coincidental.With this book, Grimes' plotting and writing enter a new, more mature stage. She takes on issues such as animal rights, and there is no longer the guarantee of a happy ending where everything is resolved nicely and turns out "all right." The denoument of the plot is another page-turner, where there is a real sense of fear and urgency for those involved, and even Jury's life is threatened. The outcome is very well written; the last paragraph is a gem of its kind.Once again, characters are the strong points. Carrie carries (sorry) on in the Grimes tradition of intelligent, resourceful young people--either children or teenagers--being crucial to the plot. As in the previous book in the series, Help the Poor Struggler, the focus of The Deer Leap is on in this case the teenager Carrie, whose past drives the plot.There are memorable once-only characters, such as Sebastian Grimsdale and the alcoholic but perfectly functioning and sane baroness. The reappearance of Polly Praed is nicely done; she's a likeable character even if you're tempted to take her by the shoulders and shake her from time to time. And making her debut, the utterly unforgettable Carole-anne Palutski!Grimesism: "Then, escorted by Sergeant Wiggens, who, ever the gentleman, offered her a throat lozenge, she marched from the room."One of the best of the series. Highly recommended.