Dreaming of the Bones

 

Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie

Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James Series #5

Mystery

2007 Avon (first published in 1997)

Finished on May 14, 2021

Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

It is the call Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid never expected--and one he certainly doesn't want. Victoria, his ex-wife, who walked out without an explanation more than a decade ago, asks him to look into the suicide of local poet, Lydia Brooke--a case that's been officially closed for five years. The troubled young writer's death, Victoria claims, might well have been murder.

No one is more surprised than Kincaid himself when he agrees to investigate--not even his partner and lover, Sergeant Gemma James. But it's a second death that raises the stakes and plunges Kincaid and James into a labyrinth of dark lies and lethal secrets that stretches all the way back through the twentieth century--a death that most assuredly is murder, one that has altered Duncan Kincaid's world forever. 

Ah, well. They can't all be winners, now can they? I loved Crombie's previous installment in her Kincaid/James series (Mourn Not Your Dead), which I read last month, but Dreaming of the Bones fell short of my expectations and I had to force myself to finish. I found it necessary to create a list of the numerous characters in order to keep them straight, even after I'd read more than half of the book. The transitions between Lydia's letters and the current storyline were abrupt and jarring, adding to my confusion. I spent almost two weeks reading this mystery and was happy to be finished, but I'm still looking forward to reading Kissed a Sad Goodbye later next month.