A review by bgg616
Garden of Lamentations by Deborah Crombie

4.0

There were a lot of moving parts in this novel and I was at a slight disadvantage as I hadn't read Kincaid and James #16. Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James are police detectives in London. They have three children ranging in age from toddler to teen. They live in Notting Hill (somehow I missed how they came to live in this very upscale neighborhood on police salaries) which puts them in touch with the more privileged segment of England. A neighbor's nanny is found dead in one of the neighborhood's private gardens, known as London's Squares (Crombie provides a history as an appendix to the book which I greatly appreciated). Gemma gets pulled into the investigation of this death. In the meantime, Kincaid, who is still miffed over his transfer out of Scotland Yard, is asked by his former "boss" to meet. He spends the book investigating a colleagues death and is pulled into uncovering a vast conspiracy within Scotland Yard as he investigates the death of a fellow officer, and goes on to investigate other unexplained deaths judged suicides in the police force.
This is another great installment in the series. I gave it 4 stars because I sometimes found it difficult to keep track of so many moving parts.
Crombie is a Texan, but nonetheless she does a great job in this series. Brits may immediately recognize that she is not a "native". I generally avoid novels written by outsiders that depend on creating the feel and sense of a place, country and culture that they do not know deeply. Crombie's series is exception for my rule.