Description:

"Deborah Crombie might be the most British of American mystery novelists," said an astute reviewer in reference to *Mourn Not Your Dead*, the fourth book in her excellent series about Duncan Kincaid, an inoffensively upper-class Scotland Yard superintendent, and Sergeant Gemma James, his rougher-edged partner and lover. In addition to her finely tuned ear for the subtler nuances of Britspeak, Crombie--a resident of Richardson, Texas--achieves a rare and therefore enviable balance between the details of her characters' private lives and the plot of each particular book. That delicate balance is especially welcome in *Dreaming of the Bones*, when Kincaid's former wife, Dr. Victoria McClellan, threatens his personal and professional equanimity. A Cambridge don, Vic has been writing a biography of poet Lydia Brooke, who claimed kinship to the distinguished World War I bard Rupert Brooke, and whose suicide five years before is now beginning to appear suspiciously like murder.