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Book Summary and Reviews of Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie

Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie

Water Like a Stone

A Novel (Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James Novels)

by Deborah Crombie

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  • Published:
  • Feb 2007, 416 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

When Scotland Yard superintendent Duncan Kincaid takes Gemma, Kit, and Toby for a holiday visit to his family in Cheshire, Gemma is soon entranced with Nantwich's pretty buildings and the historic winding canal, and young Kit is instantly smitten with his cousin Lally.

But their visit is marred by family tensions exacerbated by the unraveling of Duncan's sister Juliet's marriage. And tensions are brought to the breaking point on Christmas Eve with Juliet's discovery of a mummified infant's body interred in the wall of an old dairy barn—a tragedy hauntingly echoed by the recent drowning of Peter Llewellyn, a schoolmate of Lally's.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

Crombie's combination of the fair-play whodunit with a psychological examination of her characters may remind some readers of P.D. James, but her sleuths lack the depth of James's Commander Dalgleish." - PW.

"The intriguing personal relationships and family dynamics drive this well-crafted, impressive mystery-drama." - Booklist.

"Crombie needs to curb her love for red herrings, which swell her plot to fantastic proportions. " - Kirkus.

This information about Water Like a Stone was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Kat

Water Like a Stone
All of D. Crombie's books draw the reader in right from the beginning. I also like the fact of various plots interweaving in the story. Along with these is the interesting family story of the two detectives and their children alongside.

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Author Information

Deborah Crombie Author Biography

Photo: Steve Ullathorne

Deborah Crombie was born in Dallas and grew up in Richardson, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas, second child of Charlie and Mary Darden. Her maternal grandmother, Lillian Dozier, a retired teacher, taught her to read at the tender age of four. After a rather checkered educational career, which included dropping out of high school at sixteen, she graduated from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, with a degree in biology.

She then worked in advertising and newspapers, and attended the Rice University Publishing Program. A post-university trip to England, however, cemented a life-long passion for Britain, and she later immigrated to the UK with her first husband, Peter Crombie, a Scot, living first in Edinburgh, Scotland, and then in Chester, England.

After returning to live in Dallas, a ...

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Link to Deborah Crombie's Website

Name Pronunciation
Deborah Crombie: CROM-bee

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