Ashes to Ashes

April 13, 2015
Recent widow Anne Peters presents a most unusual problem to Patrick Gillard, on leave from the National Crime Agency, and his police partner wife, Ingrid Langley, in Duffy’s entertaining 19th mystery featuring the crime-fighting pair (after 2014’s Dark Side). Anne, who lives in the same Somerset town as Patrick and Ingrid, claims that the cremains she received are not those of her late husband, Archie. The undertaker gave her a sack of metal body-replacement parts (hip joints, etc.) left unburned after Archie was supposedly cremated. But Archie had no such artificial parts. The dilemma piques the interest of a vacationing—in other words bored—Patrick, so he and Ingrid decide to investigate. Before long they discover there’s enough meat left on those artificial bones to share with a few local gendarmes and Patrick’s NCA boss. Despite unfamiliar slang such as sprog (a child) and yob (a common thug), a good mystery is a good mystery, and this is one.

May 1, 2015
Approaching its twentieth installment, the Patrick Gillard and Ingrid Langley series shows no sign of slowing down. In their latest adventure, the husband-and-wife team of sleuths (he's a former British intelligence agent; she's a crime novelist) are approached by a woman who has a difficult problem: she's pretty sure that, at her husband's funeral, the wrong man's body was cremated. Whose body was it? And why was it there? Turns out these are the first of many questions in this very suspenseful novel. As in earlier series entries, the author keeps us glued to the page by doing two things and doing them very well: constructing an intriguing story and creating compelling interplay between the two lead characters. Patrick and Ingrid make a compelling team, and their personal and professional relationship is what keeps readers tuning in. For fans of the series, this one's a sure thingand a great read-alike for those who enjoy other hard-boiled husband-and-wife teams, like Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)