Water Like a Stone

Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid are police detectives so they shouldn't have to stumble across dead bodies. Deborah Crombie's mysteries border the cozy sub-genre so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised when their Christmas, the first spent with Duncan's family in Cheshire, includes a murder investigation. As the couple arrive with enthusiastic 5-year-old Toby, moody teenage Kit, and two dogs, Duncan's sister Juliet calls - she's found an infant's body behind the plaster of the barn she's rehabbing. Duncan and Gemma are off duty, but the DI on the case is an old friend (of sorts) so he allows them to observe. When Kit finds the body of a longboat dwelling former social worker, a woman who'd let him and his father visit the boat, there's no way the London police can stay out of the case.

As for Juliet, finding the body isn't her only worry. She'd recently opened her building business after quitting her job as office manager to her husband's investment firm, akin to the tension created by his mistaken belief that she'd been having an affair with his business partner, Piers Dalton. Their teenage daughter Lally has secrets of her own, involving Piers's son Leo and a classmate who'd drowned a few months earlier. Kit finds himself between his magnetic new cousin and his basic nature as a good kid scarred by his mother's death. His attempt to protect her puts himself in danger and unmasks the murderer.

Crombie's books are the anti-Law & Order; the detectives personal lives play a central role. Christmas was the perfect time for Gemma, Toby, and Kit to meet Duncan's casually affectionate and welcoming parents. Cheerful, energetic Toby happily accepts them as grandparent, and Gemma almost immediately feels at home with her almost-in-laws, so different from her working class parents. Kit has a slightly harder time, as one would expect considering the fraught relationship with his maternal grandparents who are fighting Duncan, who has not legally been declared Kit's father, for custody. Despite the recurring nightmare of finding his mother's body and the turmoil caused by Lally, Kit warms to his new family. Even if the mystery wasn't a good one, Water Like a Stone would be worth reading as a straight novel.