All Shall Be Well

Michael Deehy's solemn voice provides a courtly eloquence to Deborah Crombie's moody police procedural. When his neighbor, Jasmine Dent, dies, Superintendent Duncan Kinkaid is not surprised since Jasmine had terminal cancer. However, when her journals are found, Duncan and his partner, Sergeant Gemma James, suspect her death was not from natural causes. As they go through the journals, Deehy's narration makes every new discovery about Jasmine's personal life fascinating. His performance gives multiple dimensions to each of the possible suspects, including Jasmine's failure of a brother, Theo; her day nurse, Felicity; her friend, Margaret; and Margaret's money-hungry boyfriend. Deehy allows Crombie's subtle clues to reveal themselves in ordinary, completely human ways. He is nicely understated as Duncan and Gemma's connection deepens and the mystery slowly unfolds. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

January 3, 1994
Written with compassion, clarity, wit and precision, this graceful mystery amply fulfills the promise of Crombie's debut novel, A Share in Death. ``Morphine coats the mind like peach fuzz,'' thinks Jasmine Dent, a 50-year-old spinster born in India who is dying in London of lung cancer. Her death resembles suicide but leaves her friend and neighbor from the flat above, Scotland Yard Supt. Duncan Kincaid, uneasy. The postmortem he orders reveals an overdose of morphine, prompting him and his sergeant, hot-tempered, copper-haired Gemma James, on a thorough investigation. Suspects include 30-ish, disheveled Meg Bellamy, a timid friend with whom Jasmine had considered suicide, and the downstairs neighbor known as the Major, a veteran of the Muslim-Hindu clashes in Calcutta in 1946 and an avid gardener with whom Jasmine had often sat ``like two old dogs in the sun.'' Others include Meg's stunningly handsome, bullying beau Roger, who urged that she help Jasmine end her life; Felicity Howarth, Jasmine's faithful home-care nurse who slaves to keep her brain-damaged son in an institution; and Jasmine's weak-willed brother Theo, owner of a village junk shop who has failed at every venture he's tried. Helped by Jasmine's journal and a visit to a mental hospital, the clues finally click into place to reveal the culprit. Meg makes a decision that promises hope for two people, while Gemma and Duncan, both unlucky in love, move closer to each other.