THE GRAVE MAURICE

Martha Grimes's fans will be relieved to know that Superintendent Richard Jury, left for dead at the conclusion of her last book, is alive. Recovering from being shot, he is also bored. That's why he accepts Melrose Plant's challenge to figure out what happened to 15-year-old Nell Ryder, who went missing two years earlier from her grandfather's horse stud farm in Cambridgeshire. If you like abridgments, listen to this one; producer John McElroy did a difficult job as well as can be done. That said, devoted fans will miss the atmos-pherics typical of Grimes's novels; the abridgment has a pell-mell quality uncharacteristic of her writing. Roger Rees uses his fine-timbered voice to give a captivating reading and create a wealth of believable characters. He effortlessly handles the difficulty of many characters in conversation and, for a male narrator, is unusually skilled with women and children. We have one major quibble--Rees gives sophisticated Jury the broad vowels of a "plodding copper's" accent. That aside, a delightful listen. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 02/ JAN 03]