Necessary as Blood, Deborah Crombie, William Morrow, $24.99.
Necessary as Blood begins with a description of a completely charming family—Naz Malik; his wife, Sandra Gilles; and their daughter, three year old Charlotte. I was so captivated by Crombie's description of Sandra's studio—she's an artist who makes fabric collages—and Sandra's relationship with her daughter that I forgot, for a moment, that I was reading a mystery. I just wanted to read about this family. Of course, terrible things happen—Sandra disappears, and forwarding a few months or so, so does Naz, who turns up dead shortly afterwards. Left behind is little Charlotte; and left helping to sort the mess is our own Gemma James, called in by a friend when Naz first disappears to see what she can do. Gemma herself is so captivated by Charlotte that she arranges for her friend Betty, an already licenced foster parent, to take Charlotte in. But the mystery of Naz's disappearance and death only deepens.
Meanwhile it's also a hot, sticky summer, and Gemma is worried both by her mother's advancing leukemia and by her own wedding plans, which she keeps putting off. She and Duncan are somehow drifting a bit apart as Gemma pulls away from him rather than confiding in him. While both partners are police—and high up police at that—they no longer work together, so when Duncan takes over Naz's case, much of Gemma's questioning, propelled by her concern for Charlotte, is seen more as a hindrance than a help.
The end result—a twisted connection of disappearances and murders, complicated by Charlotte's grandparents and uncles, who want her despite Gemma's conviction that they would be by far the worst thing for Charlotte (the uncles are drug dealers, and narcotics is telling family services to keep their hands off their investigation)—is well plotted and complicated. Nuances of personality and behavior are something I've come to expect from this writer, and she doesn't disappoint. The ending, a relatively happy one despite little Charlotte's situation, is very satisfying for any long time reader of this series.
And now what? Having greedily inhaled this book in just two days I now have another year to wait for the next one. I can only hope Ms. Crombie is hard at work.
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