The Grave Maurice
Books / Hardcover
Books › Fiction › Mystery & Detective › General
ISBN: 0670030457 / Publisher: Viking Adult, August 2002
While flat on his back in a hospital bed, sleuth Richard Jury overhears a story that provokes his next murder investigation.
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In a pub called the Grave Maurice, Melrose Plant overhears one woman telling another the intriguing story of a fifteen-year-old girl named Nell Ryder, granddaughter of the owner of Ryder Stud Farm in Cambridgeshire, the heart of Britain's racing world. The girl was abducted nearly two years before and has never been heard from since. No word from her kidnappers, no ransom demand. Just disappeared. Her family has pretty much given up hope. All except for Nell's stepbrother, Vernon Rice, a financial virtuoso with an investment firm in the City. He refuses to believe she's dead and insists that someday, "She'll just walk in."This beautiful and enigmatic girl, whose arresting presence draws even strangers to her - including Melrose Plant - has such a keen understanding of horses and such empathy for them that Ryder's trainer says she must be "a filly dressed up in a girl costume."The story of Nell's disappearance is especially fascinating to Melrose Plant because the girl's father is Roger Ryder of the Royal London Hospital across the street from the Grave Maurice, and Dr. Ryder is Richard Jury's surgeon. For Jury the puzzle of this young girl's disappearance is almost anodyne, something to occupy his time besides listening to the dire prognostications of his dreadful nurse.But for Cambridge police, Nell Ryder's case is as cold as a case can get. Until another murder and another death heat it up again.
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