In a Dark House

The Barnes & Noble ReviewDeborah Crombie is building a reputation for creating powerful and dramatic mysteries. Her protagonists, Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, have more in common than the home and love they share, they're also both Scotland Yard detectives. In a Dark House puts Gemma and Duncan's multilayered relationship to the test, as these two gifted investigators find themselves working a brutal and complex case from differing perspectives. It starts simply Superintendent Kincaid is called in to "help" when a member of Parliament's venture into real estate goes up in smoke. At first Duncan expects that his role will be limited to keeping the politician's involvement out of the limelight. But the discovery of the body of a nude young woman at the fire scene guarantees he'll soon be doing more than damage control. Gemma comes to the case through unofficial channels, when her offer to help a friend whose lodger has vanished reveals unmistakable signs of a double life. When the M.P.'s wayward daughter disappears, Gemma and Duncan discover disturbing evidence linking that to another missing-persons case -- one where an angry father, desperate to remove his daughter from his ex-wife's care, entrusted his little girl to a virtual stranger, only to have both the woman and child disappear without a trace. Carefully, patiently, Duncan and Gemma tease out the connections between the brutalized corpse, the missing women, the kidnapped girl and a series of suspicious fires that suggest a pattern of accelerating danger. Sue Stone