Mourn Not Your Dead (1996)

Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James investigate a death in a well-known musical family. Family dynamics are pretty awful and the Duncan-Gemma relationship is a bit troubled at this point, which may be why I didn't like it as well as some of Crombie's. ( )

This was my second Kincaid/Jones mystery fourth in the series), and I admit a good part of my interest was to see what would happen between the two of them after their relationship changed in Leave the Grave Green.

In truth, perhaps because I wasn't an established fan of the series, the relationship and its hurdles served mainly as a distraction to me, as well as to the two of them. It was an almost classic situation of oh-for-heaven's-sake-just-talk-to-each-other, with Gemma pretending so hard that everything was normal that she made it far more abnormal, and Kincaid alternating between clueless wounded bafflement and brisk professionalism.

The murder in question, though, was interesting. Kincaid and James are called in on the case of a brutal murder – the twist being that the victim is a Commander of the London Metropolitan Police. Obviously the murder of a cop is always going to galvanize the force – but this story sheds a little light on a motivation other than the obvious. Apart from "someone killed one of us and getting the killer is our top priority", there is in this case another level of security and urgency about the situation: the deeper Kincaid and James have to look into this case, the more tarnished the victim's image is going to become – he was not a nice person, to put it mildly.

His wife and step-daughter, who discovered the body, are implicated, of course, and so are several of the neighbors, and so for that matter are various colleagues and underlings who loathed him. The usual complement of affairs and quirks are uncovered, and it soon becomes clear that most of the neighborhood is united in protecting … someone. Or something.

The book in specific and the series in general didn't hold me. I own several which I've picked up here and there as the opportunity presented itself, and I'll probably read them one day. ( )

Too many suspects, too little motivation for the ones considered at the end of the book. ( )

I suffered slightly by not having read the preceding book - much of the interaction between Duncan and Gemma is fall out from the clearly having slept together, but how many times and how far their relationship had gone is unknown, but the story starts with her deciding to shut the relationship down.

Meanwhile, they get called out to investigate the murder of a commander in the Met, found bludgeoned to death in his kitchen, and the investigations start. Overall a good procedural ( )

Kincaid and Jones set out to solve the murder of one of their fellow police officers in small town England. The officer appears very disliked and the murderer is no surprise.
Although I have Crombie's series so far this one is more disappointing. There was too much time spent on playing the Kincaid-Jones relationship that the mystery began to take a back seat to all the anguish. Hopefully, the next book will not focus so much on this as they finally solved their "problems" at the end. ( )