Water Like a Stone

Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie

Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James Series #11

Mystery
2007 William Morrow

Finished on March 8, 2022

Rating: 4.5/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his partner, Sergeant Gemma James, take their sons to picturesque Cheshire for their first family Christmas with Duncan's parents - a holiday both dreaded and anticipated. But not even the charming town of Nantwich and the dreaming canals can mask the tensions in Duncan's family, which are tragically heightened by the discovery of an infant's body hidden in the wall of an old dairy.

As Duncan and Gemma help the police investigate the infant's death, another murder strikes closer to home, revealing that far from being idyllic, Duncan's childhood paradise holds dark and deadly secrets . . . secrets that threaten everything and everyone Duncan and Gemma hold most dear.

One of the things I love about an on-going detective series is getting to know the main characters, seeing how their relationships evolve with friends and neighbors. With Deborah Crombie's books, the mystery usually takes center stage, and the personal relationships are an added bonus. In Water Like a Stone, however, Duncan and Gemma's family is front and center. Spending Christmas with Duncan's parents brings much more than just the typical holiday drama that Gemma was worried about. Extended family members find themselves caught up in the dramatic turn of events of the winter holiday. The climactic finale is very intense and at one point I realized that I had a white-knuckle grip on my book. Great plotting, Crombie!

In addition to the well-crafted mystery involving multiple deaths (I've learned there's never just one in this series), I loved the countryside setting along the Shropshire Union Canal and enjoyed learning about the narrowboats that navigate the canal and locks. 

Mist rose in swirls from the still surface of the canal. It seemed to take on a life of its own, an amorphous creature bred from the dusk. The day, which had been unseasonably warm and bright for late November, had quickly chilled with the setting sun, and Annie Lebow shivered, pulling the old cardigan she wore a bit closer to her thin body.

She stood in the stern of her narrow boat, the Lost Horizon, gazing at the bare trees lining the curve of the Cut, breathing in the dank, fresh scent that was peculiar to water with the coming of evening. The smell brought, as it always did, an aching for something she couldn't articulate, an ever-deepening melancholia. Behind her, the lamps in the boat's cabin glowed welcomingly, but for her they signaled only the attendant terrors of the coming night. The fact that her isolation was self-imposed made it no easier to bear.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

I've never traveled on a narrowboat but reading about them brings back wonderful memories of a river cruise I took with my mom a few years ago. 

I also had no trouble envisioning the little village where Duncan's parents owned and ran a bookshop. The buildings sound like the sort I saw in Germany and Amsterdam while on that river cruise, which traveled up the Main, Rhine, and Danube rivers. 

They passed the church, then a snow-covered expanse Gemma assumed must be the green. Their street intersected another at the green's end, and there Gemma stopped, her mouth open in an "O" of surprise and delight. This was what Duncan had described, what she had imagined. The buildings ran together higgledy-piggledy, black-and-white timbering against Cheshire redbrick, gingerbread gables, and leaded windows winking like friendly eyes. 

This was the High, she saw from a signpost, but she would have known instinctively that she stood in the very heart of the town. The shops were ordinary--a WH Smith, A Holland & Barrett, a newsagent's--but they had been tucked into the lower floors of the original Tudor houses, and so were transformed into something quite magical.

The movement of the buildings over the centuries had caused black-and-white timbering to shift a little, giving the patterns a tilted, slightly rakish air. Snow iced the rooftops, Christmas lights twinkled, bundled pedestrians hurried through the streets, and from somewhere came the faint strains of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Gemma laughed aloud. "It's perfect. Absolutely. The best sort of Christmas-card perfect."

One of the negative aspects of this mystery's setting is that it takes place away from Duncan and Gemma's home, which means the introduction of new characters does not guarantee their inclusion in the following installments in the series. I especially enjoyed Althea Elsworthy (the medical examiner) and her dog, Danny, and am sorry they aren't part of the regular cast of characters. I shall miss them.

As Babcock squelched across the rutted ice in the hospital car park, he passed Dr. Elsworthy's Morris Minor in the section reserved for doctors' vehicles. From the rear seat, the dog's head rose like a monolithic monster emerging from the deep. The beast gave him a distant and fathomless stare, then looked away, as if it had assessed him and found him wanting, before sinking out of sight once more. No wonder the doctor had no use for anything as modern as a car with an alarm system, Babcock thought as he gave the dog and vehicle a wide berth. She was more likely to be sued by a prospective burglar complaining of heart failure than to have her car violated.

I loved this book and am so happy I have seven more left remaining to read in this series. Now if only Britbox or Acorn would create a TV series for when I'm caught up. That would be perfect!