Leave the Grave Green

One reason why my mom loves Deborah Crombie's mysteries (and pushed me to read them) is how she blends police department politics into her novels.  That's at play in Leave the Grave Green, where the Assistant Commissioner calls in Duncan Kincaid to take on the case of Connor Swann's drowning.   Connor's in-laws are a famous conductor and opera singer, both knighted in their own rights, and twenty years earlier their son had drowned in the same flooded stream.  As Duncan explores the family matters (and becomes attracted to the victim's widow), Gemma explores the world of opera.  Along the way they find several viable suspects and motives (the widow is always a suspect, and the victim's gambling connected him to a particularly unsavory local character).  Crombie created an unexpected conclusion, though, which surprised me and in which the separate worlds in which Connor Swann lived collide.