Deborah Crombie has won rave reviews for her British mysteries featuring Scotland Yard's Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his partner Sergeant Gemma James. Now the talented author of Dreaming of the Bones returns with another darkly irresistible tale, this one leading Kincaid and James into their most haunting inquiry ever.
The call from Scotland Yard couldn't have come at a worse time for Duncan Kincaid. He has promised the weekend to Kit, the eleven-year-old son of his ex-wife. The son he never knew he fathered--who doesn't yet know Kincaid's true identity. But Duncan's best intentions are shattered by a case that draws him in and consumes his interest.
A young woman's body has been found in the tall grass of East London's Mudchute Park, her jacket and short skirt carefully arranged to preserve her modesty. It seems too odd a detail for a simple case of robbery or assault gone awry. And indeed the case becomes more complex when the dead woman is identified as Annabelle Hammond, bold and brilliant head of a family-owned tea company. For the victim was a mystery even to those who knew her best.
Alluring, headstrong, and ambitious, with looks no man could forget, Annabelle was the sort of woman who inspired the strongest of emotions...passion certainly, jealousy, anger, even obsession. And when Duncan and Gemma fan out to question anyone connected to her, it doesn't take long to discover that the lady was also adept at keeping secrets...especially from those she loved.
As the detectives try to penetrate Annabelle's tangled affairs to glean the motive of her killer, their list of suspects grows to include her suave, upper-class fiancé; the handsome street musician who may have been the last person to see her alive; her sister's vengeful ex-husband; even her own father. But what they don't know is that this case has long roots that reach far back into the past, and that resentments that should have been long buried still have the power to hurt, and maybe even the capacity to kill.
The call from Scotland Yard couldn't have come at a worse time for Duncan Kincaid. He has promised the weekend to Kit, the eleven-year-old son of his ex-wife. The son he never knew he fathered--who doesn't yet know Kincaid's true identity. But Duncan's best intentions are shattered by a case that draws him in and consumes his interest.
A young woman's body has been found in the tall grass of East London's Mudchute Park, her jacket and short skirt carefully arranged to preserve her modesty. It seems too odd a detail for a simple case of robbery or assault gone awry. And indeed the case becomes more complex when the dead woman is identified as Annabelle Hammond, bold and brilliant head of a family-owned tea company. For the victim was a mystery even to those who knew her best.
Alluring, headstrong, and ambitious, with looks no man could forget, Annabelle was the sort of woman who inspired the strongest of emotions...passion certainly, jealousy, anger, even obsession. And when Duncan and Gemma fan out to question anyone connected to her, it doesn't take long to discover that the lady was also adept at keeping secrets...especially from those she loved.
As the detectives try to penetrate Annabelle's tangled affairs to glean the motive of her killer, their list of suspects grows to include her suave, upper-class fiancé; the handsome street musician who may have been the last person to see her alive; her sister's vengeful ex-husband; even her own father. But what they don't know is that this case has long roots that reach far back into the past, and that resentments that should have been long buried still have the power to hurt, and maybe even the capacity to kill.
