Deborah Crombie

• Born: June 5, 1952
• Place of Birth: Dallas, Texas

TYPES OF PLOT: Police procedural; cozy

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, 1993-

Contribution

Deborah Crombie’s first book, A Share in Death (1983), introduced Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James and was an immediate success. Crombie’s special talent is creating convincing English whodunits despite being born and educated in Texas. In this, Crombie resembles Martha Grimes, but her novels are more wide-ranging than those of Grimes. They are heavily atmospheric, with evocative detail contributing to the reading experience. Crombie’s idiosyncratic mode of writing is something a little darker than the typical cozy, but she does tend to follow the traditions established by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Dorothy L. Sayers. She follows the Christie technique of providing a parade of suspects at the novel's end and surprising the reader with the final conclusion. However, her characters are far more layered and realistic than Christie’s. Crombie has updated the traditions of the Golden Age, female mystery novelists, and provided believable, likable new characters. Moreover, the buildup of suspense in the Crombie novels is unmatched.

Like many detective series novels, Crombie’s books provide an extended narrative of the relationship between the two main characters, and Crombie adds depth to these characterizations by filling in more background with each book. Many minor characters appear and disappear in the series, but the main characters grow. The novels are police procedurals only in the broadest sense, emphasizing intuitive discovery. Crombie’s strengths include a persuasive British location, appealing series characters, and psychological realism. She is often compared with Elizabeth George and Grimes, but Crombie has a stronger emphasis on setting, and her settings are more dynamically involved with the characters and their actions.

Crombie received Agatha and Macavity Award nominations in 1993 for her first novel, A Share in Death, and Dreaming of the Bones (1997) won the Macavity Award, was named New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was nominated for numerous awards. Her novels have been published in England, Italy, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, France, the Czech Republic, and Germany.

Biography

Deborah Crombie was born Deborah Lynn Darden in 1952 in Dallas. She spent much of her childhood reading, began writing poetry in junior high school, and was soon a committed writer. After sporadic experiments with higher education, she graduated from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, in 1977 with a major in biology—she then wished to be a field biologist or ornithologist. For her graduation present, her parents took her to England, and she says:

that must have been the true turning point in my life. On the bus from Gatwick to London . . . I sat with my nose pressed to the window and tears running down my face. I had the most tremendous sense of homecoming, of belonging, that I still feel whenever I set foot on British soil.

This trip with her parents sparked a repeat trip by herself, and a lifelong love affair with the British Isles.

Crombie’s first marriage to Peter Crombie, a Scot, did not survive the publication of her first book. In 1994, she married Rick Wilson. Crombie, for a time, lived in the United Kingdom, where her stories are set. After a visit to Yorkshire, she began her Emma James-Duncan Kincaid series. Crombie eventually settled in Dallas, later noting that if she were to live in England, she would be divided emotionally and that her novels might not be as intense emotionally, as they would lack the element of longing for England. According to M. K. Graff, Crombie “agrees with her role model P. D. James that setting drives her characters, dictating their actions and behavior.” Crombie immerses herself in the settings of her novels to present them as vividly as possible.

After publishing her first novel, Crombie became a full-time writer. Previously, she worked in newspaper advertising and for a family business.

Analysis

The interaction between Deborah Crombie’s two main characters helps illustrate some British truths about class and money. As the relationship between Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid grows, they each learn something about the class system to which they belong, and so does the reader. The characters’ interactions with others provide subtle messages concerning authority and power, including how they affect others. The varied settings provide ample opportunity to present a study of British social values.

Crombie’s first books are more police procedurals, with clear explanations of the various stages of the investigation, from the discovery of the body to finding the culprit. She convincingly describes autopsies and investigation techniques. Some of the books end with explorations of various possible perpetrators before zeroing in on the always-surprising culprit. A lot of the atmosphere of the books comes from the interaction between the two investigators.

Some of the later books are moody, overcast, even gothic. A Finer End (2001), for example, contains undeniable supernatural elements that play a significant part in the story, while in other books, the supernatural may be marginally present as a possibility. In A Finer End, the supernatural grows out of the environment, which makes it seem more natural. It may remind the reader of the notion of rememory in ’s Beloved (1987), in which places are believed to carry images or traces of traumatic events that have occurred there. The notion of the effect of a place and its history on the present action is behind the apparently supernatural deviations from the norm in A Finer End. Vivid descriptions of natural scenes and of architecture in this book and others underscore the action and help explain it.

Major themes in Crombie’s work include the relationships between parents and children: how strong these bonds are and what they cause people to do and the terrible grief of losing a child. She also writes about the problems inherent in romantic relationships between people from different social backgrounds. Other important concerns are the effect of place on inhabitants, providing opportunities and obstacles, and the causes and effects of betrayal and how it damages that primary necessity, trust. Over and over in the novels, Crombie deals with the issue of trust, not only between Gemma and Duncan but also between other characters.

Mourn Not Your Dead

The 1996 novel Mourn Not Your Dead recounts the bludgeoning death of an unpopular police official, Division Commander Alastair Gilbert, who was widely known for his cruelty. Some missing jewelry suggests the killer may be a burglar who has been operating in the area, but other circumstances suggest a more complicated motive. The fragile-appearing widow and the daughter of the victim are mysterious women whose actions cannot be read. The scene shifts back and forth from Gilbert’s village to London as Duncan and Gemma investigate all the tormented links between Gilbert and others—almost any of which could have resulted in a murder. However, the conclusion is a genuine surprise.

This novel continues the romance between Gemma and Duncan, who had tentatively begun a relationship in the previous novel, Leave the Grass Green (1995). They must put their relationship aside in favor of the investigation, but they learn something about themselves from the outcome. This novel is straightforward and direct, with detailed representations of minor characters.

Dreaming of the Bones

Dreaming of the Bones (1997) is an award-winning novel that has been discussed in academic circles for its use of biography as part of the plot. In this work, the lives of Gemma and Duncan are complicated by the re-emergence of Duncan’s former wife, Dr. Victoria “Vic” McClellan, who is writing a biography of poet Lydia Brooke, who apparently committed suicide five years earlier. However, it seems unlikely to Vic that Lydia’s death was a suicide because everything looked good for the poet at the time. Duncan reluctantly agrees to investigate and soon finds evidence that Vic may be right. The investigation has disastrous results, though, including a murder—someone does not wish the inquiry to continue. Through a close examination of Lydia’s life and a long-lost poem, Gemma discovers the secret that will lead to the resolution of the case.

This novel is the favorite in the James-Kincaid series for many readers, as it is plausible, romantic, and well written. Those not fans of detective stories like it also, as it is a fine novel, in part about biography, that can be categorized with books like ’s Possession (1990) and ’s The Truth About Lorin Jones (1998). The novel also exhibits a distinct and unusual form of feminism, which has caught the eye of feminist scholars.

A Finer End

A Finer End begins with the unusual experiences of Duncan’s cousin Jack Montfort, who suddenly finds himself writing in Latin and wonders what is happening to him. He is in Glastonbury, the legendary burial place of King Arthur and Guinevere. It is also the location of an old abbey where long ago, tragic events that ended the monks’ peaceful worship took place.

Jack calls Duncan, who reluctantly agrees to visit Glastonbury. There Duncan and Gemma find a complex situation involving both history and the present, current and ancient violence. The two have to find a solution that will both end the present violence and right a situation that has been wrong for centuries. The quest to do these things brings them into dangerous situations.

The novel is dominated by the gloomy abbey and the frightening Tor, which pulls people toward it even as they are repelled by it. This novel is well researched; the spookiness is stronger for being founded in fact. The tone of this novel is a departure for Crombie, but the unusual atmosphere makes the book well worth reading.

In a Dark House

In a Dark House (2005) is one of the best of the James-Kincaid mysteries, having a complex and yet believable plot, a frightening atmosphere, and plenty of accurate police-procedural techniques to keep the reader informed. As the novel begins, a fire is being set by an arsonist; this fire results in a corpse. The fire takes place next to a home for battered women, and soon Duncan must interview the young female resident who reported seeing something the day of the fire, as well as others staying at the home. Gemma, meanwhile, is investigating the disappearance of a woman whose housemate is a friend of vicar Winifred Catesby. There is another mystery: a child who has been abducted, perhaps by a parent. The mysteries prove to be related, of course, and the threads of story come together in an explosive conclusion.

Duncan’s personal life is also in crisis—he is threatened with loss of custody of his son Kit. His relationship with Gemma is uneasy, and the makeshift family they have created seems likely to pull apart. The bond between parents and children and its demands is the underlying theme of this novel, both in the mystery and in the ongoing story of the two detectives. Perhaps more than any other novel in the series, this story focuses on the intense bond between parents and children and the internal and external dangers to it.

Crombie continued writing the Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James mystery series across three decades. Her later works include Necessary as Blood (2009), No Mark upon Her (2012), Garden of Lamentations (2017), and A Killing of Innocents (2023).

Principal Series Characters:

• Duncan Kincaid is a Scotland Yard detective superintendent from a privileged background. At the beginning of the series, he is a divorced man who is trying to lose himself in his job.
• Gemma James, initially a Scotland Yard sergeant in the series, is the single mother of Toby James. A disparity in social rank between Gemma and Duncan complicates their working relationship. However, despite their differences, the pair begin a romance, which is interrupted sporadically by career and personal issues.

Bibliography

"The Books." Deborah Crombie, www.deborahcrombie.com/index.php/the-books. Accessed 20 July 2024.

Bunsdale, Mitzi M. Gumshoes: A Dictionary of Fictional Detectives. Greenwood Press, 2006.

Crombie, Deborah. A Share in Death, vol. 1. Pan Macmillan, 2010.

Dingus, Anne. “Briterature.” Texas Monthly 25, no. 11, Nov. 1997, p. 26.

Dubose, Martha Hailey, with Margaret Caldwell Thomas. Women of Mystery: The Lives and Works of Notable Women Crime Novelists. St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2000.

Graff, M. K. “Deborah Crombie: The Yellow Rose of Mystery.” Mystery Scene, vol. 87, 2004, pp. 18-19.

Hansson, Heidi. “Biography Matters.” Orbis Litterarum: International Review of Literary Studies, vol. 58, no. 5, 1994, pp. 353-70.

Lindsay, Elizabeth Blakesley, editor. Great Women Mystery Writers. 2nd ed., Greenwood Press, 2007.