Sun 5 Feb 2017
DEBORAH CROMBIE – A Share in Death. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1993. Berkley, paperback, 1994. Avon, paperback; 1st printing, September 2003.
A Share in Death is the first of now 17 books in author Deborah Crombie series of mysteries solved by the Scotland Yard pairing of Supt. Duncan Kincaid and his assistant, Sgt. Gemma James. Although there are two brutal deaths that occur in it, it would best to describe it as a cozy, I’m sorry to say, with many of the negative connotations that that might imply.
If you can’t have a manor house snowed in and full of guests for the holidays, the next best thing might be a timeshare vacation resort filled with strangers to each other, which is exactly where Kincaid is heading for a week’s worth well-deserved rest. He’s there totally incognito, but you as well as I know exactly how long that’s going to last.
Found dead in a Jacuzzi pool is the assistant manager, a man who made his business to know as much as he could about the guests, and from that point on Kincaid’s vacation is essentially over. He’s an outsider, though, and the local police inspector is one of those blokes who resents the high muckety-mucks from Scotland Yard horning in on his turf — one of the oldest clichés in the mystery writer’s handbook.
Worse, there is another. A elderly lady having memory problems tries to tell Kincaid about something she has seen, but they are interrupted, and Kincaid doesn’t bother getting back to her. Until, of course, it is too late, and there is a second victim, and you don’t get even a single chance to guess who.
Even worse. The solution comes from nowhere — at least from nothing the reader was privy to. On page 244 Kincaid thinks back to a conversation he had overheard on page 55 (the Avon edition), puts two and two together and comes up with five because we the reader weren’t told everything that transpired in that aforesaid conversation.
I hate it when that happens.
And if Kincaid had heard what he is supposed to have heard on page 55, he should have known exactly whodunit by page 56.
Maybe I missed something, and you can certainly correct me if I’m wrong, but at least one reviewer of this book on Goodreads points out the same thing.
Not a series I’ll be continuing.
February 5th, 2017 at 8:37 pm
Barry Gardner had a more positive reaction. You can read his review here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=44535
As a footnote to his comments at the time, it is also only fair to point out that I added the fact that A SHARE IN DEATH was given Agatha and Macavity nominations for Best First Novel of 1993.
February 6th, 2017 at 6:26 am
I read this, and continued with the series for a fair while, but eventually just lost interest in their domestic situation and quit reading them.
February 6th, 2017 at 2:50 pm
It was too early in this first book in the series for there to be any noticeable attraction between Duncan and Gemma. They weren’t together in the same place for more than one or two scenes, and those mostly at the end of the book. I wonder if Crombie had any intentions along these lines when she wrote A SHARE IN DEATH, or if it developed naturally as the series went along.
February 6th, 2017 at 9:24 pm
A low budget version of what George, Grimes, and James did better. Entertaining, but not always much of a detective story.