Necessary as Blood

July 20, 2009
Romance dominates Crombie's 13th contemporary procedural featuring Scotland Yarders Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid, who are on the verge of getting married (after 2008's Where Memories Lie
). The how, where and when of their wedding proves a considerable source of stress to both, overshadowing the murder investigation of Naz Malik, a solicitor suspected in the disappearance of his wife, Sandra Gilles, an artist specializing in textile collage. Malik was found suffocated in Bethnal Green, with traces of an animal tranquilizer in his system. Meanwhile, James's mother is seriously ill, placing James in the impossible position of trying to fulfill both her familial and work responsibilities. In addition, James must fight to keep Malik's now parentless young daughter from falling into the custody of Sandra's unsavory relatives. Hopefully, Crombie will provide a better balance of police work and her characters' personal lives next time.

Deborah Crombie's popular, long-running mystery series about Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his colleague and love, Sergeant Jemma James, has become increasingly domestic, which suits Jenny Sterlin's reading admirably. Sterlin, who has read almost all the Crombie books, narrates with an unhurried, considering pace, which allows the listener to track all the permutations of the plot and the way it intersects with the detectives' personal lives. In this book, murder in London's East End leads them into a case of kidnapping and female subjugation. Sterlin's voice is husky, sometimes almost raspy, a quality that informs a story with male and female protagonists. She's also terrifically good with accents as different as Cockney and Indian, and her children are believable rather than squeaky. Altogether fun. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine