Necessary as Blood

I won't give away a thing about this wonderful new book in the series, except to say that it is a remarkable and engrossing book and anyone who has enjoyed the previous twelve books can not help but love this one (on its own and for what it adds to the series as a whole). Enjoy every page of it. And then start to wonder how long it will take before Ms. Crombie publishes the next addition to the series! I don't dole out five stars often, but this book earns every bit of it.

It's hard for a mystery novelist to sustain a long-running series with the same set of detectives. In some cases, I end up wondering just how many bodies some communities generate over the year; in other cases, the author himself or herself seems to be wearying of their task, and end up delivering predictable and ho-hum books. A few successfully develop new characters (Natasha Cooper has already done this once, the writing team of Charles Todd seems to be trying to do the same.) Then there's Deborah Crombie, whose 13th offering in the series of police procedurals featuring Duncan Kincaid and his fiancee and fellow police officer Gemma James is one of her best yet. There are no fictional pyrotechnics, homicidal lunatics, no piling up of corpses at every turn -- there isn't even really a vast global conspiracy theory. There are just a collection of fallible and sometimes malicious or callous individuals, whose actions or inactions have consequences for all around them. In this particular character-driven mystery, a young mother named Sandra Gilles simply vanishes one day, leaving her toddler daughter with a family friend for what she promises will just be an hour or two. Then, months later, her husband also disappears; Charlotte, the 3-year-old daughter, can say only that her Mummy went away and her Daddy went to look for her. Gemma and Duncan share mutual friends with Naz, Charlotte's father and a Pakistani-born lawyer, and are in on the case early, even before the first dead body shows up. From then on, they work together and separately to resolve the mystery and help create the best possible future for Charlotte, who, if they don't act, may end up living with her maternal grandmother despite the presence of two drug-dealing uncles and the fact that Sandra had no contact with her family. The plot itself is complex but adeptly handled so that it never feels so; the characters are all plausible and the settings so vivid that I remain astonished that Crombie is an American and not a Londoner. There's nothing here to stretch the reader's credulity. Best of all, Crombie manages to blend the plot with the developments in Duncan's and Gemma's real lives (they are trying to find a way to marry that will keep everyone happy, as Gemma's mother must cope with a recurrence of her cancer -- disclosed very early on in the book, so not a spoiler!). There are no simple answers to either their personal challenges or to the mystery of what happened to Sandra or Naz, but Crombie ably walks the narrow line between giving away too many clues or emerging at the last moment with an improbable solution to the crime. Highly recommended to anyone who likes character-driven mysteries. This isn't as elegantly written as P.D. James, or as complex as Elizabeth George's books, but anyone who relishes their characters should enjoy this series. It could be read as a stand-alone book, but there are frequent references throughout to events dealt with in previous episodes of

In a year when "the new Laurie King" was a total cheat and "the new Margaret Maron" was barely there and "the new Sara Paretsky" was merely good, it's blissful to fall into the new Deborah Crombie. Crombie's characters - on-going and new - are vivid yet believable, while her ability to weave setting into plot just gets better and better. Less dark than Ruth Rendell and more plot-driven than PD James, Crombie is that rare writer who can keep a series going without resorting to massive trauma in the lives of her main characters as a selling point. Crombie's Gemma James is now the primary character in the novel, and that's a very good thing. Although the series sometimes moves away from London, the metropolitan novels are my favorites. This time we get the Brick Lane Bangla-Angla community, the social services system, fabric art, and the whole question of what it means to be a Brit in the third millennium. Crombie makes excellent use of the epigraph, heading her chapters with quotes from an impressive East End bibliography. I always learn interesting stuff (a technical term there, sorry) when I read -- or reread -- one of her novels. Only Donna Leon can rival Crombie at the art of making setting, plot, theme, and the personal lives of her main characters function as elegant parts of a perfect construction: the really good read. I tried to read slow so it would last longer, but . . . .

Julia Walker's review of this book is spot on and I totally endorse everything she has to say. I just want to add a couple of things. 1. Because the Crombie series, like Donna Leon's equally brilliant Brunetti series, is so character driven, I strongly recommend reading the books in chronological order. Then, by the time you get to this one, the 13th in the series, your involvement with Gemma, Duncan, their families, friends, colleagues and how their personal histories have evolved will be firmly in place, greatly adding to the many pleasures you'll find here. Here's the list, in order: "A Share in Death," "All Shall Be Well," "Leave the Grave Green," "Mourn Not Your Dead," "Dreaming of the Bones," "Kissed a Sad Goodbye," "A Finer End," "And Justice There Is None," "Now May You Weep," "In a Dark House," "Water Like a Stone," "Where Memories Lie," "Necessary as Blood." 2. This second comment is a bit off topic and relates to the atmospheric chapter header quotes that Walker mentions. Several are from Dennis Severs's book about his Spitalfields house at 18 Fogate Street. During my first trip to London in 1982 I spent an evening at one of Severs's otherworldly candlelight tours of his house and it remains one of my most memorable travel experiences; "Necessary as Blood" brought it all back for me. Any fans of this book enchanted with Crombie's portraits of today's East End and thinking of including it on an upcoming London visit should check out dennissevershouse online. Severs is no longer with us, but his house and its magical time capsule tours continue on Monday evenings, advance bookings required. For present day atmosphere, I recommend the marvelous 2007 indie movie "Brick Lane."

A young woman named Sandra Gilles leaves her child with a friend in London's colorful East End and promptly disappears. Then her husband, a Pakistani lawyer, is murdered. This is a particularly disturbing case for Insp. Gemma James of the Notting Hill C.D. and her partner, Supt. Duncan Kincaid of Scotland Yard. As they wade through a morass of evidence, conflicting stories, twisted motives, prejudice, and greed, they are ever more determined to protect the little girl at the center of the mystery. This is the 13th entry in one of my all-time favorite British crime series. I read the first "Duncan-and-Gemma," A Share in Death (Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James Novels), when it was published in 1993, and every book since then has been a joy. Crombie gives us solid mystery stories along with the ever-growing (and ever more complicated) relationship between her two detectives and their children. NECESSARY AS BLOOD is British mystery at its best--by an author who happens to be American. If you love P. D. James, Ruth Rendell, Peter Robinson, Reginald Hill, Martha Grimes, and Elizabeth George, you'll love Deborah Crombie. Highly recommended.