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    The Dirty Duck
    The Dirty Duck
    The Dirty Duck
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Dirty Duck

    Written by Martha Grimes

    Narrated by Steve West

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Dirty Duck is a pub in Shakespeare’s beloved Stratford, and in this pub Miss Gwendolyn Bracegirdle of Sarasota, Florida, fresh from a performance of As You Like It, takes her last drink. A few minutes later she is slashed ear to ear, the only clue: two lines from an unknown poem printed across a theater program. The razor-happy murderer, it seems is stalking a group of rich American tourists. And Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury, just passing through Stratford for a glimpse of the intriguing Lady Kennington, instead takes a crash course in the bloodier side of Elizabethan verse.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJul 2, 2013
    ISBN9781442363120
    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 Dirty Duck

    4/5

    282 ratings10 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Big disappointment. Farfetched solution. The Dirty Duck is a famous pub in Stratford and the story centers around American tourists visiting there. The story starts with a missing boy, from a large family, and then the murders begin. The characters were caricatures of rich southerners and stuffy British snobs. It also was very dated with the Concord jet flying in 4 hrs back and forth.
    • 3/5
      I didn’t enjoy this as much as the other Richard Jury novels.
    • 5/5
      A nice little mystery. A quicker, easier read than her others that I have read. I liked the characters and the descriptions of their interactions.
    • 5/5
      Superintendent Richard Jury is in Stratford-on-Avon on some regular police business. He’s given a call to Melrose Plant to come meet up. Plant has taken Jury up on the invite to visit and has also come to Stratford to avoid the “American cousins” from Milwaukee descending on Ardly End. Aunt Agatha, Plant’s American aunt-by-marriage, had hopes of impressing her American cousins with Plant’s titles and wealth. A visit to Stratford in the middle of tourist season was the only way Plant could avoid the invasion.Instead of taking in a few of the nightly Shakespeare performances, the two men find themselves dealing with a missing boy and then three slash murders. The people involved are all from the same tour group. Three are from the same family.The murders are quite violent and at each one two lines from an Elizabethan poem are found. How do these poetic quotes tie to each death and to each other?The murder victims are all women. How does the missing boy play in and will he be found violently murdered also?Grimes writes a good mystery that I find I can get into and escape in. I was not disappointed with this one.
    • 3/5
      Martha Grimes tells an interesting story like Louise Penny. Both writers employ writers from the past as part of the story. And both writers delve into setting and characters and steer clear of rambling dialogue. In The Dirty Duck, Grimes sets her sights on Shakespeare’s, As You Like It, and the writer Christopher Marlowe. What an adventure as the reader learns more about Shakespeare and Marlowe and the political world of writers in merry olde England. Grimes presents history and literature as delightful tales in her mystery of murder and mayhem which Richard Jury and Melrose Plant must solve. The list of characters and old favorites dance among the pages and even Vivian and Aunt Agatha appear. A young boy disappears, and his stepmother and stepsister meet with danger. Is this one family the target of misfortune? I love the story and the familiar articles such as Melrose drinking Old Peculiar ale and Agatha eating everything.
    • 5/5
      murder-investigation, law-enforcement, friendship What a creative tale! The characters certainly are, the venue is odd, the murders are artfully done, the investigation is much like rabbits out of hats, and the humor is sly. But I liked it. Steve West is rather droll as narrator.
    • 4/5
      4 books into the series I am still engaged and wanting to read the next book. Superintendent Richard Jury is visiting Stratford Upon Avon when a series of violent murders occur all seemingly connected to Honeysuckle Tours. Melrose and he team up as usual to figure out the crimes. A quick, engaging, well-written read.
    • 5/5
      A nice little mystery. A quicker, easier read than her others that I have read. I liked the characters and the descriptions of their interactions.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable procedural. Nothing fancy, and I didn't much care "who dunnit," but I did enjoy watching the crime and its solution unravel.
    • 1/5
      4th in the Richard Jury series.Jury is in Stratford-on-Avon, using the return of Jenny Kennington's emerald necklace as an excuse to see the attractive widow once more. While there, he is prevailed upon by Detective Sergeant Sam Lasko of the local constabulary to talk with an American family, the Farradays, visiting Stratford as part of a tour group, about progress on finding their 9 year old son who has gone missing. But soon Jury finds himself far more involved--unofficially--as one of the tour group, an American woman, is found murdered in a most brutal way.Melrose Plant is in Stratford desperately trying to avert the visit to Ardry End of Agatha's numerous American cousins. Thus he is right on hand when yet another female member of the tour group, this time a member of the Farraday family, is murdered in the same manner. Meantime, Melrose has inadvertently acquired a companion, Harvey Schoenberg, a young American computer specialist (this is in 1983) tour group member, who is an enthusiast of a bizarre theory about Christopher Marlowe's death. The tour group makes its way to London, where yet more murders occur. What adds to the fear in the case is that the murders appear to be occurring according to the lines in a 16th century poem, raising the possibility of many more murders to fit the poem.Much as I love Martha Grimes and the Richard Jury series, this book is boring. Her plots are usually quite good; this one is too strained for belief. Her strong point in this series is her characters. Here, all the new ones are stock cardboard cutouts, dragged from every unflattering American (and some English) stereotype possible. Even Plant and Jury are not up to par, and Agatha does not have a large enough role to figure into any fun. Grimes' wit is a major part of the enjoyment of her books; in this one, it is greatly subdued. The climax, basically, is unbelievable.There are some interesting aspects to the book, especially the part about the computer Schoenberg lugs around. In 1982, there were exactly 88 connections to the Internet; the computer phenomenon had not taken hold by 1983, when the book was written. Schoenberg's computer was hardly a laptop; in fact, the first portable computers weighing around 35 lbs were not really available until the late 1980's. And Schoenberg uses his computer strictly as a storage device; there is no mention of the Internet. So it's interesting that in 1983, Grimes was able to incorporate the very beginnings of what would be a world-wide phenomenal explosion of technology.As usual, Grimes has an engaging child character, the 9 year old James Carlton Farraday. He is the typical resourceful Grimes child, and is one of the brighter spots in an otherwise dim book.Grimeism: "Some men went for their guns under stress,some for their cigarettes. Wiggens went for his cough drops."Overall, this is a boring book and quite untypical of the series.