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Belle Ruin
by Martha Grimes
Product Group: Book
Publisher: NAL Trade (2006-09-05)
ISBN: 0451219449
EAN: 9780451219442
Dewey Decimal #: 813.54
Binding/Media: Paperback - 384 pages
SKU: TC-GYEM-RS3D
Condition: As New
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In a fitting follow-up to Hotel Paradise and Cold Flat Junction, Martha Grimes's Emma Graham, returns to charm readers with her sharp, funny, perceptive voice. A waitress at her mother's decaying resort hotel, twelve-year-old Emma now has a second job as the youngest cub reporter in the history of La Porte's Conservative newspaper. But when she discovers the crumbling shell of a fabulous hotel- the once-sumptuous Belle Rouen-in the woods near her small town of Spirit Lake, Emma never imagines that the mysteries it holds will bring her one step closer to solving a forty-year-old crime-and force a new transgression to light.
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Customer Reviews
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"Ruin" is an apt description
Rating  (1)
Date: 2010-06-17
I've been a Grimes fan for almost two decades. The Richard Jury series ground to a halt years ago, but I keep hoping that this writer will find fresh material. Sadly, she hasn't. This story was beyond disappointing.
I assume the girl, Emma, is supposed to be smart, cute and precocious. She isn't. She's an irritating pre-teen with too little supervision (playing nasty pranks with people's food and where is her mother rushing off to all the time?). No, I don't care about whether the owner of the cab company actually ever drives the cab (why does this warrant a 5 minute discussion with the cab driver). As for the central mystery, a baby kidnapped decades ago, who cares? The characters are cliched stereotypes. There is no compelling mystery. The story goes on for far too long with far too much meaningless detail.
Perhaps the written version is better. However, I've just slogged through the first disc of the 11 disc audiobook and can't for the life of me understand the 4 and 5 star reviews. As for the narration - this is set in New England??? Would someone then please explain the narrator's on-again, off-again Southern accent?
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Do I like it or not?
Rating  (3)
Date: 2010-04-07
I've read all three books in this series, and I'm not sure whether I like them or not.
I like Emma, her quaint little town, and her unending search to solve mysteries. The sheriff, Maud, and Dwayne are interesting characters, and very likeable ones, but one does have to wonder what kind of mother Emma has. Emma always seems to have money to hire cabs and buy what she wants, and yet she seems to have no supervision.
This novel, for me, was downgraded for the silly Medea subplot. It didn't make any sense, and it wasn't interesting. I find that I'm tired of Will, Mill, and Re-Jane. I also got very tired of reading about doughnuts, and I like my mysteries to end with a resolution.
Since this novel has a 2005 publication date, one has to wonder if it is the last in this series.
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What???
Rating (1)
Date: 2009-09-18
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I listened to this book on CD while driving across country. I often lost focus, but was able to reconnect whenever necessary. However, I had to listen to the ending 3 times! It didn't end. I couldn't believe I wasted 10 hours when there were no answers to the questions. What???
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waste of time
Rating (1)
Date: 2009-07-29
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I was a fan of Martha Grimes until the Emma books. They are all lightweight and repetitive. This is the worst of the lot. 3/4 of the book is a rehash of the others and the rest is very unsatisfactory. More time is wasted on the description of doughnuts with sprinkles than on the unresolved plot.
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A mystery... but more importantly, a terrific NOVEL
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-07-03
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
People are all over the place in reviewing this one and, for those who notice such things, I'm quick to give two- and three-star ratings when I feel it's appropriate -- but not here! I read this work carefully and Martha Grimes has here reached the reserved level of achievement that we call "literature".
I was quite concerned that Martha Grimes was "written out" subsequent to my reading of her 2006 work, The Old Wine Shades (Richard Jury Novels), a Richard Jury series mystery and one of the worst books I've ever encountered by a major author. I still don't know for certain that Grimes continues to write first-class material because "Belle Ruin" came out in 2003 but I'm loathe to believe that anyone who could generate such a fine novel as this one could be permanently doomed on the literary front.
This work is obviously a sequel and I have read none of the previous books in the series but that bothered me not at all -- this book stands prominently on its own (albeit, there are allusions to the prior books.) I will certainly go back and pick up the prequels but, as I bought this title in a junk store for 50 cents, that's why I read it first.
The story, transpiring in New England around 1959, is all about a very precocious and deviously shrewd 12-year old girl who decides to investigate a kidnapping (suspiciously akin to the Baby Lindbergh case) which transpired 20 years in the past at the luxurious Belle Rouen Hotel. This girl, Emma by name, has been given a job by the local newspaper editor/publisher to write up a serial account of her own recent escape from murder, a topic about which all the locals consider to be really hot gossip.
There are multiple sub-plots (all enticing) but the key here is that Grimes has pulled off a descriptive expression coup. By way of utilizing this endearing young girl, tenoned with the common vernacular of the era, (the tale is told in First Person from Emma's perspective) Grimes gets away with bluntly calling people as she sees them: "stupid," "dumb," "harelips," "hunchbacks," "Mongolian Idiots," and, "retards". These now politically incorrect adjectives and nouns are thus effectively conveyed without harm to the author herself, a clever device. The nostalgia of "spitballs" also made me grin about the good old days.
But I think what many readers/reviewers are most up-in-arms about is the ending... they don't like it and that's all I'll say about it specifically; however, I did like the ending. Why? It goes to the book's title: Belle Ruin, A NOVEL [emphasis mine]. Yes, this is a mystery, and a great one at that. But this is clearly a novel, in the same sense that The Great Gatsby and Peyton Place are novels. This is the writing style and I think that this is what train-wrecked the book for many devoted cozy murder genre fans. I love a great novel and, here, that's what we have, although it is also a mystery.
I did encounter an entry that I'll go out on a limb and assert was an anachronistic goof by the author: "...he put in a coin and a can of Coke dropped down." I worked in many a gas station in my youth (the 60s) and in 1959, I'm pretty certain that soda vending machines only vended bottles of pop, not cans. Even the pull off pop tops weren't around until much later than 1959 as far as I can recall. I could be wrong about all this but I don't think so!
There are even some unique cocktail recipes listed, ergo: an "Appledew" with Dewar's Scotch, apple juice, ice, and a straw. Yum!!!
In summary, if you're a murder mystery genre addict then you may find this one of only mild interest. But for those of you who savor a terrific novel, I think you'll find this book to be pure treasure.
Highly recommended.
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