Leave the Grave Green

March 29, 1999
Crombie's Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his sergeant Gemma Jones make a welcome return, after All Shall Be Well, to investigate a suspicious drowning in the countryside outside London. The seemingly placid domestic life of distinguished conductor Sir Gerald Asherton and his wife, Dame Caroline Stowe, a renowned soprano, is disturbed when their son-in-law's body slips through the local lock and is dragged up to reveal suspicious bruises around the neck. The Ashertons' daughter Julia had recently left Connor, who was ``on good terms with pints and ponies.'' While her parents continued to lunch weekly with the victim in their stately home, Julia, who 20 years earlier had witnessed her little brother's death by drowning, has had nothing to do with him. The youthful, slightly rumpled Kincaid, his pleasant manner masking a keen intelligence, and the equally insightful, appealing Jones make little pretense that police work is objective, detached business. Occasionally Crombie lets their personal feelings-Kincaid's for the widow, Jones's for opera, and both for each other-outweigh the story. Nonetheless, the passages of the first drowning are haunting, the mystery is intriguing, the characters are well developed and the solution satisfies. Stay tuned. Author tour.

January 1, 1995
When police detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James (who are series regulars) investigate a suspicious drowning near London, they encounter a strange situation: the victim's widow-a painter whose father is a famous conductor and whose mother is a renowned opera singer-is oddly stand-offish and strangely unaffected by her husband's death. Crombie (All Shall Be Well, LJ 1/94) creates strategic tension by both establishing a parallel between this drowning and the childhood drowning death of the painter's brother and by juxtaposing two protagonists who feel-but struggle against-a mutual attraction. Lucid prose, well-focused plot, and all the trappings of a cosy British mystery-from a talented American author.

February 1, 1995
Scotland Yard investigators Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James venture out from London to find answers to the death of Connor Swann, son-in-law of a well-known couple: a famous conductor and a honored opera singer. Swann has been found floating in a Thames River lock, and when he's fished out, it's obvious he has been strangled. Because he was estranged from his wife, she's automatically a suspect. What Duncan and Gemma uncover in the course of their inquiry is that the couple--the conductor and the opera singer--also had a son who drowned many years ago while in his sister's company. Of course it's in Duncan and Gemma's professional best interests to find out if there's a connection between the two events. Detail and pacing are immaculate as the investigation is drawn closer and closer toward domestic secrets as the source of the solution to the crime. A superbly engrossing whodunit for all active mystery collections. ((Reviewed February 01, 1995))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1995, American Library Association.)