The 4th installment of the Kincaid/James detective series. The victim this time is a high ranking police officer, bludgeoned in his own kitchen in Holmbury St. Mary. Both Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James knew him in the past; no one seems terribly sorry he's gone, but no one seems to have hated him enough to kill him either. Meanwhile, our principals are working through some personal STUFF that isn't making the investigation go any smoother. Not quite as engaging as the previous two in the series, and some side stories were not resolved to my satisfaction. But the characters are friends of mine now, and I'll follow them a while longer. ( )

I mourn the time I spent on this series. #DNF ( )

I suffered slightly by not having read the preceding book - much of the interaction between Duncan and Gemma is fall out from the clearly having slept together, but how many times and how far their relationship had gone is unknown, but the story starts with her deciding to shut the relationship down.[return][return]Meanwhile, they get called out to investigate the murder of a commander in the Met, found bludgeoned to death in his kitchen, and the investigations start. Overall a good procedural ( )

3.5 stars, too easy to figure out "who dunnit" ( )

The mystery itself was so-so and there was no subtlety in how the clues were worked into the case, but those aren’t the things that keep bringing me back to this series. It’s the characters and their drawn-from-real-life interactions that have me hooked, along with the way they address real world issues such as domestic violence, abandonment, and workplace discrimination. I just hope the next book picks up with the unresolved secondary case from this one. ( )