The Black Cat

A Richard Jury Mystery

By: Martha Grimes

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Three months have passed since Richard Jury was left bereft and guilt- ridden after his lover's tragic auto accident, and he is now more wary than ever. He is deeply suspicious when requested on a case far out of his jurisdiction in an outlying village, where a young woman has been murdered behind the local pub. The only witness is the establishment's black cat, who gives neither crook nor clue as to the girl's identity or her killer's.

Identifying the girl becomes tricky when she's recognized as both the shy local librarian and a posh city escort, and Jury must use all his wits and intuition to determine the connection to subse­quent escort murders.

Meanwhile, Jury's nemesis, Harry Johnson, continues to goad Jury down a dangerous path. And Johnson, along with the imperturbable dog Mungo, just may be the key to it all.

Written with Martha Grimes' trademark insight and grace, The Black Cat signals the thrilling return of her greatest character. The superintendent is a man possessed of prodigious analytical gifts and charm, yet vulnerable in the most perplexing ways.

©2010 Martha Grimes (P)2010 Penguin

Jury did it againnisledingly funny and surprising

If you could sum up The Black Cat in three words, what would they be?

misdirecting. clever and fummy

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

the pace was easy

Which scene was your favorite?

the one with the 1 cats in the bar

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

dealing with the sargent

Any additional comments?

love jury and his neighvor

The dog is the smartest one!

british-detective, murder-investigation, friendship, law-enforcement

Three single women discreetly living double lives are murdered and the only connection seems to be the nature of the second job and the wearing of pricey designer shoes. The investigation is twisty and convoluted enough, but there is a side issue with a couple of dogs and some look alike black cats. If you like listening to the conversations among cats and dog, this will suit very well.

Narration is awful.

The new narrator is terrible. If the next books are narrated by him. I am not sure I will make it through them.

Haven't finished it yet....

Would you consider the audio edition of The Black Cat to be better than the print version?

In this instance I'm going to guess the print version is better, since we've become used to hearing Steve West portray all the characters' voices with all their nuances.

If you’ve listened to books by Martha Grimes before, how does this one compare?

Terrible. Horrible narrator. Mr. Lee is simply reading the book to us (and too fast) in a monotonous tone rather than playing out the characters with his voice like we've come to know and love them when read by Steve West.

How could the performance have been better?

Never let anyone besides Steve West narrate this series.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Haven't finished it yet.

Any additional comments?

Can't wait to finish this story so I can stop listening to it. Pleased to see Steve West is back to narrating the next in the series. I've listened to them all up to this point and love the characters as fleshed out by Steve West.

Ohh Martha. You dun'it again!

I never tire of Richard Jury and the gang. Live the call backs to The Old Wine Shades.

Tweak your audio settings

The story is worth listening to as hard as it is to hear it butchered by a poor reader. For me the worst is hearing the butler's name pronounced exactly as Agatha pronounces it! Slow down the speed and change audio settings to highest bass and lowest treble to take away the whiny sound.

Where's Steve West?

This Jury story is just not the same experience without our usual reader Steve West. John Lee misses the characters and the wryness and the warmth. We would have skipped this story because of that but then we would miss the sequence of events in the character's lives...

where's steve west

had to get used to narrator. ....I much prefer Steve West as narrator. stories are always interesting, but sreve makes listening so enjoyable. he has the subtle changes in voice for thr characters.

The Black Cat

The story like all others in the series is very good. However, the narrator, John Lee is new and takes some getting used to. His voice is nice and clear but he reads too fast most of the time and mispronounced Plant's manservant's name throughout the book. It should be pronounced "Riven" not the way he says it. This is aggravating because in previous books they continously correct Agatha ' s mis-pronouncing it (Agatha, you have been shriven by Riven.) It makes it seem like Audible is not concerned with the quality of the recordings. I would recommend Audible use the same narrator for the entire series instead of throwing the listener off by switching near the end of the series. I sure I'm not the only one that likes to listen to the entire series straight through. Another problem that is aggravating is that I have bought the entire series that's available on Audible, but the two books prior to "The Black Cat" are referred to but aren't available in audio versions. Amazon needs to make "The Winds of Change (New York: Viking Penguin, 2004) and The Old Wine Shades (New York: Viking Penguin, 2006)" available in audio so the Audible series can be complete. Throughout the series references are made to previous books and it's really disconcerting to have a block of two books missing. Although each book can be read separately, the following books build on the previous stories and it is designed to be read as a continuous story. Amazon does the readers a disservice by skipping the two books.

Miss Steve West

Not sure why the switch, but if Steve West was unavailable they would have done better to just wait. I was able to enjoy the book just on the story’s merits. I had to slow the speed down to 0.9x and did cringe whenever he pronounced Ruthven incorrectly or Palutzki. Mr Lee does have a pleasant voice, and I might enjoy him in a different milieu.