No mark upon her : a Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James mystery

Crombie, a three-time Macavity Award winner, an Edgar Award nominee, and a New York Times Notable author, stages another New Scotland Yard procedural here, with the team of Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his partner through the series (now his wife), Inspector Gemma James. It gets off to an eerie start. The body of a rower is discovered tangled in debris in the Thames. The victim is a young woman, Rebecca Meredith, a detective with the Metropolitan Police, who had been undergoing a punishing training regimen in hopes of qualifying for the women’s single scull event in the upcoming Olympics. The investigation is especially tricky because of Meredith’s professional status. It gets trickier still when Kincaid and James discover a host of suspects, including Meredith’s ex-husband and the rowers with whom she trained. An added shock is the attempted murder of one of the search-and-rescue team members who found Meredith’s body. Adding to the considerable interest of plot and characters here is the expertise Crombie shares on the rigors and skills of sculling.