And Justice There Is None

Rating:
Summary: This may be Crombie's best work so far...
Review: I really loved this book and was torn between reading it quickly to find out what was going to happen next or reading it slowly to savor the pleasure for as long as possible. Crombie keeps getting better and her two main "detectives", Kincaid & James, are endearing, interesting characters who you grow to care about in this series. I can hardly wait to find out what will happen to them in the next book.

The plot for this book involves events from the 60s, and periodically the present day story will be interrupted by pages telling another story from the past. Of course by the end of the book, you understand why that 60s story explains these current day murders, but it takes a long while to put 2 and 2 together. A young woman, pregnant with her lover's child, is found savagely murdered in the driveway to her upper class home in Notting Hill, a trendy London neighborhood. The woman's disreputable antique-dealer husband is the obvious suspect -- perhaps too obvious. Gemma James is in charge of the murder investigation, but since there is a possible connection to a murder being investigated by Duncan Kincaid, these two (now living together but no longer working together) end up working together again on this case. Perhaps the same person who killed another woman two months previously -- a case Kincaid was in charge of -- also killed this Notting Hill woman, since the method was so similar. But what is the connection and why were they killed?

There are a lot of unusual neighborhood characters, including a couple of veterinarians and a man who feeds the homeless.

Although I guessed the killer about half-way through the book (based not on clues but on a shrewd guess based on my knowledge of mysteries in general), it didn't diminish from my enjoyment of the book. I used to think Deborah Crombie was almost as good as Elizabeth George, but now I think Elizabeth George is almost as good as Deborah Crombie.

Rating:
Summary: This may be Crombie's best work so far...
Review: I really loved this book and was torn between reading it quickly to find out what was going to happen next or reading it slowly to savor the pleasure for as long as possible. Crombie keeps getting better and her two main "detectives", Kincaid & James, are endearing, interesting characters who you grow to care about in this series. I can hardly wait to find out what will happen to them in the next book.

The plot for this book involves events from the 60s, and periodically the present day story will be interrupted by pages telling another story from the past. Of course by the end of the book, you understand why that 60s story explains these current day murders, but it takes a long while to put 2 and 2 together. A young woman, pregnant with her lover's child, is found savagely murdered in the driveway to her upper class home in Notting Hill, a trendy London neighborhood. The woman's disreputable antique-dealer husband is the obvious suspect -- perhaps too obvious. Gemma James is in charge of the murder investigation, but since there is a possible connection to a murder being investigated by Duncan Kincaid, these two (now living together but no longer working together) end up working together again on this case. Perhaps the same person who killed another woman two months previously -- a case Kincaid was in charge of -- also killed this Notting Hill woman, since the method was so similar. But what is the connection and why were they killed?

There are a lot of unusual neighborhood characters, including a couple of veterinarians and a man who feeds the homeless.

Although I guessed the killer about half-way through the book (based not on clues but on a shrewd guess based on my knowledge of mysteries in general), it didn't diminish from my enjoyment of the book. I used to think Deborah Crombie was almost as good as Elizabeth George, but now I think Elizabeth George is almost as good as Deborah Crombie.

Rating:
Summary: Dependably Fine
Review: I think it's clear that you can count on Crombie to come through with a fine, serviceable and well-crafted mystery. She is not going to win the Nobel for Literature since mysteries are only appreciated by those who "get it", but Crombie is a first-rate practicioner of good mysteries.

Rating:
Summary: So badly written it's entertaining.....
Review: I've just spent several days carefully reading Deborah Crombie's AND JUSTICE THERE IS NONE. I would be less than honest if I suggested the book was not entertaining but this book is not as well written as some of her earlier tales. I have read all of Crombie's books and really liked some of the earlier ones. However, it occurs to me that unlike mysteries by James or Christie, one cannot pick up a Crombie mystery and understand what is happening with regard to the two main characters Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid (i.e. the book does not stand on it's own two legs!!). JUSTICE is particularly cumbersome in this respect not only because the plot is cumbersome, because Gemma became pregnant in a preceding book and Kincaid discovered he had a son of whom he had no earlier knowledge in either the preceding novel or the one before. Even given exposure to these two characters over the course of several novels, I am a bit puzzled as to what they see in each other. Maybe it's all physical attraction.

Where is this place? According to her earlier book jackets, Crombie is apparently an American who lived in the UK for a short period and travels there often. I had the feeling the entire time I was reading this book that Julia Roberts or Hugh Grant was going to pop out at any moment as Crombie's depiction of Portobello Road tended to remind me of Nottinghill -- the movie. I've stayed in the Bayswater area a number of times as well as other parts of London (my son lives on Wimpole Street) and I find Muslims, Sikhs and other folks from Southern Asia live all over London including the Bayswater/Portobello Road area (and their children ride the public buses). On the other hand, folks from the Caribbean more or less integrated with the British working class some time ago, are much less visible these days.

Mise en Scene?? Crombie is not the only American writer to cash in on the world-wide love of "cosy" UK mysteries, snd she is no better a writer than some of her rivals such as Elizabeth George. Although Crombie has been compared to PD James (an authentic UK author), she is not in James' league. Baroness James knows English society well and has an incredible talent for character development and scene setting-expertise I find very important if I am to care about what happens to the characters in a novel. People without depth and underdeveloped scenes leave me cold. With the advant of television and filmmaking, more than ever before, readers now visualize the action in a book in terms of the setting. Without the appropriate mterial, the action falls flat. James is a master at painting a backdrop, establishing a believable milieu and setting a tone. In James novels, the sense of place becomes as important as what the characters say and do. I can still vividly recall scenes James described in books I read years ago (and not all have been included in the many films based on her books).

Too many cooks spoil the stew... According to the "spin" on her book jacket, Crombie has been described as one who writes "literary"text. I don't think so. I am as familiar with great English literature as the next bibliophile, and Crombie does not produce literary tomes. Great books in any language have intricate AND integrated plots. Crombie's plots in recent books are extremely clumsy. At one point in this novel, Kincaid comments on how the current investigation is a "real mess". My thought on reading this passage was "yes, indeedy, this story is a mess." Crombie usually thanks her "Every other Tuesday night writers' group. Perhaps she should begin to write her own story and wean herself from their "help". This book reads as if a committee wrote it.

Professionalism. Writers have been advised to write about what they know. It seems to me that Crombie like many other younger writers has much to learn about office politics. Gemma James is no Jane Tennison. Screwing your co-worker and then copping a promotion wins you no praise from fellow workers. Most folks find this sort of behavior threatening, so it should not be surprising that Gemma has a conflict with her male subordinate. Bad enough to deal with one boss. Who needs a boss and co-worker who are 'intimate"? Even if they are married, which James and Kincaid are not, there is a certain feeling of "ganging up" for those not "in the loop".

Read the paperback if you must. This book is a good example of what not to write if you wish to join the likes of Jane Austin.

Rating:
Summary: Crombie is back at the top of her game
Review: What a relief to find Deborah Crombie back in stride, after her disappointing previous outing, A Finer End! I know many people thought highly of that book, but I wasn't one of them; I even feared that she had fallen prey to what I think of as Charles Todd Syndrome, which is what happens when a good mystery writer churns out too many books too fast, with the result being a precipitous drop in quality.

But with And Justice There is None, Crombie is back at the top of her game. She writes so evocatively about Notting Hill, the neighborhood becomes another character in the book. She handles the plot masterfully, doling out information in just the right amounts and at just the right pace that the reader always has a glimmer of an idea about what's going on, but the full picture doesn't become clear until just before the end of the book. And she does a nice job of interweaving the strands of Duncan's and Gemma's personal and professional lives.

I'm giving this book four stars instead of five, because I have a few quibbles about it. At one point, Crombie tries to create a diversion by having suspicion fall on a character on the basis of "evidence" that's so flimsy, smart cops like Kincaid and James would never have taken it seriously for a minute. And the character of Kit is, frankly, too good to be true, considering his age and what he's been through recently. But maybe Crombie is saving his adolescent rebellion as a plot device to use in her next book. If she is -- and if it's as good as this book -- I look forward to reading it.

Rating:
Summary: A Rich Tapestry of a Book!
Review: With this book, I think that Deborah Crombie proves her right to be up there with P.D. James and Elizabeth George. This is a beautifully written, though complex tale of love, possession, hate and evil. In this book Gemma has a murder in her patch. It's her first big case as Inspector, and the murder is of prominent woman who had her throat cut in her own driveway. Gemma and her new team try to put the pieces together and as they start to do that it becomes apparent to her and to Duncan Kincaid that there are striking similarities between this case and one that happened in Duncan's territory. They get to work together to try to prove a connection. At the same time Duncan and Gemma are combining their households and moving in together. It should be a completely happy time for them, but they both find that this case is going to cause tragedy to a number of lives, maybe even their own. This is a rich, complex, psychological thriller that is extremely complex and multi-faceted. I take my hat off to Ms. Crombie

Rating:
Summary: A Rich Tapestry of a Book!
Review: With this book, I think that Deborah Crombie proves her right to be up there with P.D. James and Elizabeth George. This is a beautifully written, though complex tale of love, possession, hate and evil. In this book Gemma has a murder in her patch. It's her first big case as Inspector, and the murder is of prominent woman who had her throat cut in her own driveway. Gemma and her new team try to put the pieces together and as they start to do that it becomes apparent to her and to Duncan Kincaid that there are striking similarities between this case and one that happened in Duncan's territory. They get to work together to try to prove a connection. At the same time Duncan and Gemma are combining their households and moving in together. It should be a completely happy time for them, but they both find that this case is going to cause tragedy to a number of lives, maybe even their own. This is a rich, complex, psychological thriller that is extremely complex and multi-faceted. I take my hat off to Ms. Crombie