A Share in Death

In an online discussion a few years ago, someone mentioned that she liked starting a series around book 3 or 4 because the author had by then worked out some of the problems with the characters and set-up.  I'm obsessive about reading series in order, and it's only because my mom was so enthusiastic about No Mark Upon Her that I was willing to enter Deborah Crombie's Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James series about a dozen books in.  I loved the book, so of course I went back to the beginning.

I met James and Kincaid as newlyweds with a long-term relationship and three shared kids (one hers, one his, one in the process of being adopted by both - No Mark Upon Her takes place as James ends her parental leave and Kincaid starts his).  It's odd to meet them as near-strangers, both divorced and Gemma's son the only child making even a cameo appearance.  She's not even around for most of the novel, which is an interesting way to introduce a dual protagonist mystery.  

It's also a nice twist to introduce police detectives into a "cozy" structure that Agatha Christie could have written.  After several weeks of particularly hard work, Duncan drives to Yorkshire to spend a week in a time share loaned to him by a relative.  We get the usual Christie treatment - large house, people from diverse walks of life thrown together, a hint of romance - and a mysterious death.  Here it's the assistant manager of the resort, a young man whose life centered upon bon mots and stored information.  Soon, there's another death, and the Christie-like assumption that one murder was committed to cover up another.  That's true, but exactly which murder was the core is a real surprise, and one I didn't discover until about two pages before Duncan (with the aid of his DS and not-yet-girlfriend Gemma, working independently to provide the crucial information).  I'm eager to see how quickly (or slowly) their relationship develops - and to read more of Crombie's well-plotted puzzles.