MOURN NOT YOUR DEAD

The love affair Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James that began so uncertainly in the final pages of Leave the Grave Green (1995) is abruptly curtailed by the news that Superintendent Alastair Gilbert, the divisional commander down at Notting Dale, has been found dead in his kitchen. Some missing jewelry points to the burglar who for months has been taking the oddest trinkets from the villagers of Holmbury St. Mary. But there are deeper waters, too: Kincaid and James find little love for the scheming, manipulative Gilbert anywhere in the pacific village, from the wife who had grown out of love with him and into love with her business partner to the staff officer Gilbert had leapfrogged for promotion. The setting and characters are well drawn, if slightly pro forma, in Crombie's Texas British fashion, but few readers will be as surprised as Kincaid and James at the outcome.