My mom has been reading Deborah Crombie's books since the start of the series, but No Mark Upon Her is the first volume she's handed to me. I prefer reading series from the start, so as soon as my annual book diet ends, I'm gong to start working my way through the thirteen books that precede it.
Rebecca Meredith had been a shoo-in for the Olympic rowing team at 22, until she went skiing and broke her wrist a few months before the trials. Nearly 15 years later, she's a Scotland Yard DI and maybe, possibly, about to try again for the Olympic team. When she misses an appointment with her ex-husband (who needs some information on a potential investor, a recently retired police official), he assumes the worst. He's right - Becca has been murdered and left to drift downstream from her grounded shell. Police brass call in DI Duncan Kincaid, just married and about to take family leave with his newly adopted daughter. They trust Duncan to both solve the case and to be discreet, because they suspect that police politics may have lead to Becca's murder. With his wife, DS Gemma Jones (still on family leave) and her former assistant Melody Talbot investigating the rumors that bubble up during the official case, Duncan and his assistant Doug Cullen discover the killer's identity.
Or did they? Crombie pulls off one of the hardest tricks for a mystery novelist, a true surprise ending that's fully supported. That, and how skillfully Crombie blends in Duncan's and Gemma's domestic life, is why I now have a new series to read.
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