Dreaming of the bones

Deborah Crombie

Book - 1997

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MYSTERY/Crombie, Deborah
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Subjects
Published
New York : Scribner 1997.
Language
English
Main Author
Deborah Crombie (-)
Item Description
"A Duncan Kincaid / Gemma James novel"--cover
Physical Description
350 p.
ISBN
9780061150401
9780684801414
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

As in her Leave the Grave Green (1995), Crombie uses a tragedy from the past to precipitate one in the present. Just as poet Lydia Brooke was fascinated by her literary "namesake," Rupert, so Cambridge professor Vic McClellan has made finding out about Lydia, now dead, her mission. But in probing Lydia's life for a biography, Vic comes across some information that makes her believe that Lydia's death was murder--a discovery that leads her to contact her ex-husband, Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid. When Vic herself is found dead, Duncan is pulled into the mystery, taking his lover, Sergeant Gemma James, along with him. Like the three previous contemporary whodunits in the series, this one concentrates more on character than on atmosphere and puzzle, and the complicated tapestry of relationships that Kincaid and James must unravel leads not only to a murderer and a terrible secret but also to knowledge that touches Kincaid's own life and affects the future of his relationship with James. This doesn't have quite the English country house flavor of Elizabeth George's books, though George's readers might like it; so might readers who've enjoyed Jill McGowan's mysteries featuring Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd and Detective Inspector Judy Hill. --Stephanie Zvirin

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Crombie's English procedural series featuring Scotland Yard's Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James (Mourn Not Your Dead, 1996, etc.) takes a giant leap forward with this haunting mystery set among Cambridge literary types. Vic McClellan, Duncan's ex-wife and a member of the English faculty at Cambridge, is writing a biography of Lydia Brooke, a Cambridge poet whose death five years earlier was attributed to suicide. Convinced that Lydia didn't kill herself, Vic asks Duncan to look into the poet's death. Estranged from Vic since she left him 12 years ago, Duncan is at first unwilling to help. But Vic's literary evidence and a brief look at the local police records soon convince him and Gemma, who's his lover as well as his partner, that there's something fishy about Lydia's demise. Having reconciled with Vic and been charmed by her son, Kit, Duncan is devastated when she is murdered. Assisted by Gemma, he sets out on a personal crusade to find the killer. Their investigation leads to Lydia's circle of Cambridge friends in the 1960s: Nathan, now on the botany faculty; Darcy, a colleague of Vic's on the English faculty; Daphne, headmistress of a girls' school; and Adam, an Anglican priest. It's Gemma, through close reading of a long-lost poem by Lydia, who uncovers the crucial secret. As Crombie continues to explore Duncan and Gemma's complicated relationship, she adds a deeper resonance in the form of Duncan's feelings for Vic and Kit. This is the best book in an already accomplished series. Crombie excels at investing her mysteries with rich characterization and a sophisticated wash of illuminating feminism. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Scotland Yard Supt. Duncan Kincaid and his partner and lover Gemma James (Mourn Not Your Dead, 1996, etc.) track down the fatal obsession that killed Kincaid's ex-wife, the biographer Victoria McClellan--the same obsession that may have taken the life of her subject, poet Lydia Brooke. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Dreaming of the Bones Chapter One Where Beauty and Beauty meet All naked, fair to fair, The earth is crying-sweet, And scattering bright the air, Eddying, dizzying, closing round, With soft and drunken laughter; Veiling all that may befall After--after Rupert Brooke, from " Beauty and Beauty " The post slid through the letter box, cascading onto the tile floor of the entry hall with a sound like the wind rustling through bamboo. Lydia Brooke heard the sound from the breakfast room, where she sat with her hands wrapped round her teacup. With her morning tea long gone cold, she lingered, unable to choose between the small actions that would decide the direction of her day. Through the French doors at the far end of the room, she could see chaffinches pecking at the ground beneath the yellow blaze of forsythia, and in her mind she tried to put the picture into words. It was habit, almost as automatic as breathing, this search for pattern, meter, cadence, but today it eluded her. Closing her eyes, she tilted her face up towards the weak March sun slanting through the windows set high in the vaulted room. She and Morgan had used his small inheritance to add this combination kitchen/dining area to the Victorian terraced house. It jutted into the back garden, all glass and clean lines and pale wood, a monument to failed hopes. The plans they'd had to modernize the rest of the house had somehow never materialized. The plumbing still leaked, the rose-patterned wallpaper peeled delicately from the walls in the entry hall, the cracks in the plasterwork spread like aging veins, the radiator hissed and rumbled like some subterranean beast. Lydia had grown used to the defects, had come to find an almost perverse sort of comfort in them. It meant she was coping, getting on with things, and that was, after all, what was expected of one, even when the day stretching ahead seemed an eternity. She pushed away her cold cup and rose, tightening the belt of her dressing gown around her slight body as she padded barefoot towards the front of the house. The tile felt gritty beneath her feet and she curled her toes as she knelt to gather the post. One envelope outweighed the rest, and the serviceable brown paper bore her solicitor's return address. She dropped the other letters in the basket on the hall table and ran her thumb carefully under the envelope's seal as she walked towards the back of the house. Freed from its wrapping, the thick sheaf of papers unfolded in her hands and the words leapt out at her: In the matter of the marriage of Lydia Lovelace Brooke Ashby and Morgan Gabriel Ashby . . . She reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped as her brain picked out words from among the legalese. Final decree . . . petition of divorce granted this day. . . The pages slipped from her numb fingers, and it seemed to her that they drifted downwards, cradled on the air like feathers. She had known it would come, had even thought herself prepared. Now she saw her hollow bravado with a sudden sickening clarity--her shell of acceptance had been fragile as the skin of algae on a pond. After a long moment she began to climb the stairs slowly, her calves and thighs aching with the burden of each step. When she reached the first floor, she held on to the wall like an unsteady drunk as she made her way to the bathroom. Shivering, shallow-breathed, she closed and locked the door. The motions required a deliberate concentration; her hands still felt oddly disconnected from her body. The bath taps next; she adjusted the temperature with the same care. Tepid--she'd read somewhere that the water should be tepid--and salts, yes, of course, she added the bath salts, now the water would be warm and saline, satin as blood. Satisfied, she stood, and the deep blue silk of the dressing gown puddled at her feet. She stepped in and sank into the water, Aphrodite returning from whence she came, razor in hand. Victoria McClellan lifted her hands from the keyboard, took a breath, and shook herself. What in hell had just happened to her? She was a biographer, for Christ's sake, not a novelist, and she'd never experienced anything like this, certainly never written anything like this. She had felt the water slide against her skin, had known the seductive terror of the razor. She shivered. It was all absolute rubbish, of course. The whole passage would have to go. It was full of supposition, conjecture, and the loss of objectivity that was fatal to a good biography. Swiftly, she blocked the text, then hesitated with her finger poised over the delete key. And yet . . . maybe the more rational light of morning would reveal something salvageable. Rubbing her stinging eyes, she tried to focus on the clock above her desk. Almost midnight. The central heating in her drafty Cambridgeshire cottage had shut off almost an hour ago and she suddenly realized she was achingly cold. She flexed her stiff fingers and looked about her, seeking reassurance in familiarity. The small room overflowed with the flotsam of Lydia Brooke's life, and Vic, tidy by nature, sometimes felt powerless before the onslaught of paper--letters, journals, photographs, manuscript pages, and her own index cards--all of which defied organization. But biography was an unavoidably messy job, and Brooke had seemed a biographer's dream, tailor-made to advance Vic's position in the English Faculty. A poet whose brilliance was surpassed only by the havoc of a personal life strewn with difficult relationships and frequent suicide attempts, Brooke survived the late-sixties episode in the bath for more than twenty years. Then, having completed her finest work, she died quietly from an overdose of heart medication. The fact that Brooke had died just five years before allowed Vic access to Lydia's friends and colleagues as well as her papers. And while Vic . . . Dreaming of the Bones . Copyright © by Deborah Crombie. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.