Christmas dinner will just have to wait for murder. Scotland Yard inspectors Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, along with his son Kit and her son Toby, barely get through the door of Duncan's parents' house in Cheshire for a holiday visit when his sister Juliet, a building renovator, calls him out to her job site, where she's uncovered the body of a baby mortared into a barn wall. While Duncan and Ronnie Babcock, an inspector in the local CID, try to identify it, young Kit finds the corpse of his friend Annie Lebow, a retired social worker who's been living on a narrowboat. The discovery revives nightmare memories of his own mother's death. The Wains, narrowboaters and former clients of Annie's, are determined to keep mum about their run-ins with Social Services. Meanwhile, Juliet's marriage disintegrates under the gleeful eye of her husband's business partner Piers, whose son Leo, together with Juliet's daughter Lally, seem determined to corrupt young Kit. Duncan, hard-pressed to soothe Kit, placates Gemma (who's angered that she's babysitting instead of participating in the murder investigation), defends his sister, works the two cases and eventually discovers something rather unsurprising--that family reunions are less friendly than one might expect. The narrowboats are intriguing, and it's comforting to think that Gemma and Duncan are together for the long haul, but Crombie needs to curb her love for red herrings, which swell her plot to fantastic proportions. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Although the presence of Scotland Yard detectives Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid provides the glue that ultimately holds Crombie's latest novel together, the pair seems less involved in solving crime this time than in previous adventures. That doesn't stop this multifaceted mystery from being one of the best in Crombie's long-running series. Christmas with Duncan's family proves just as stressful as Gemma feared, though not in the way she anticipated. Moments after arriving at the elder Kincaid's farmhouse, Duncan is called away by his sister, who has discovered the body of an infant entombed in the wall of a building she is renovating. The sad, horrifying discovery sets the stage for a tightly knit, two-pronged tale, which has a retired social worker at its heart. Duncan's teenage son, newly come to live with his father and Gemma, and Duncan's sister, whose family is disintegrating, are in sharp focus here, as is a canal-boat family whose suffering reminds Duncan and Gemma of recent losses of their own. As in books by Elizabeth George and P. D. James, the intriguing personal relationships and family dynamics drive this well-crafted, impressive mystery-drama. --Stephanie Zvirin Copyright 2007 Booklist

Three victims murdered more than ten years apart have Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James on the hunt in this latest from Crombie, who lives in northern Texas. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The start of Crombie's solid 11th contemporary police procedural featuring Duncan Kincaid of Scotland Yard and Gemma James of the Notting Hill Metropolitan Police (after 2004's In a Dark House) finds the two detectives, also romantic partners, in the English countryside with their children to celebrate Christmas with Kincaid's family. But the trip turns into a busman's holiday when Kincaid's sister, Juliet Newcombe, finds the mummified corpse of an infant in the wall of a building she's renovating. That discovery proves but the first of many mysteries that soon invade the quiet Cheshire community-a woman who once worked as a social worker is murdered, and Juliet finds evidence that her own husband and his partner may be embezzlers. Crombie's combination of the fair-play whodunit with a psychological examination of her characters may remind some readers of P.D. James, but her sleuths lack the depth of James's Commander Dalgleish. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved