Published: July 23, 2008 10:47 am         

Impersonating a british novelist

ON SECOND THOUGHT

By Carol Ferguson



If you’re a fan of British mysteries, here’s good news.

I’ve just found a new book that’s a winner — one of those “hate to see it end” novels. It’s titled “Where Memories Lie,” and if you didn’t know otherwise, you’d think the author was born in London.

You’d be dead wrong.

Deborah Crombie writes with the accuracy and lingo of a Brit, but she is actually a native Texan, now residing in McKinney.

I first came across her books in early 2007 when her publicist sent me a review copy of “Water Like A Stone,” the 11th in Crombie’s Scotland Yard series featuring detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James. Opening the book I thought, rather smugly, that it would probably be rather pedestrian. Just imagine — someone who grew up in Richardson trying to write an authentic British mystery.

Well, it knocked my socks off. The plot was intricate, the characters likable. Crombie is a pro.

I immediately looked up her earlier books and read all of them. They do not disappoint, and although the relationship of the two main characters evolves throughout the series, the books need not be read in order of publication.

In her latest, “Where Memories Lie,” Crombie introduces a murder which has ties leading back to the horrors of World War II. Gemma’s elderly friend, Erika Rosenthal, learns that a valuable brooch created by her father and lost during her escape from Berlin to London in the 1930s has turned up in the catalog of a prestigious London auction house. She asks Gemma to help her discover where the brooch has been for the past 50 years and who put it up for sale.

As several present-day characters meet their deaths, the complex plot twists and turns to reach an unexpected conclusion. It was unexpected for me, at any rate. Although I generally try to solve any mystery before the fictional detectives sort it all out, Crombie’s resolutions seldom fail to surprise me, and yet the denouement is never farfetched.

Her first novel, ”A Share in Death” (1993), was nominated for the Agatha and Macavity awards for Best First Novel, and her fifth, “Dreaming of the Bones” (1997), was nominated for a Best Novel Edgar award in 1997. It was a New York Times Book of the Year, and was chosen by the Independent Mystery Booksellers of America as one of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the Century.

Crombie’s books have been published in Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Romania, Norway, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom.

She carefully researches her novels by traveling back to London at least two times for each book. The first trip is “an idea gathering expedition ... soaking up ideas and atmosphere. The second and/or third trip is more detail-oriented, working out the exact locations where scenes occur and checking facts.”

While there, she lives in a flat in the Notting Hill area, shops locally, reads the newspapers, people-watches and eavesdrops — a cultural immersion that gives her work authenticity.

Back in the States, she lives with her husband, two German shepherds and three cats. She also has a grown daughter.

On an Internet site she explains what motivates her to write: “I have an insatiable curiosity about people ... I can remember looking in lighted windows at night as a child and making up stories about the unknown inhabitants. Then there’s Britain itself, an endless source of inspiration for me. And there are the words themselves, the addictive process of putting words on paper (or screen, as the case may be), of language unfolding. Oh, and it does pay the bills!”

I am somewhat puzzled that a film company has not bought the rights to her stories, for they are every bit as good as the Inspector Lynley films on Public Television’s “Mystery” series.

On the other hand, however, I am relieved they have remained only in book form. The money would be lovely for Crombie, but I can’t see Hollywood handling the delicate balance between the mystery cases themselves and the relationship between Duncan and Gemma. And the miscasting could be frightful — say, Hugh Grant as Duncan?

Cor blimey, as a Cockney might say.

Stick with the books.



Ferguson is a feature writer for the Herald-Banner.