I got two books this week from Paperbackswap. I ordered them after reading and enjoying the first book in the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series.
Perhaps it is a blessing when Jasmine Dent dies in her sleep. At long last an end has come to the suffering of a body horribly ravaged by disease. It may well have been suicide; she had certainly expressed her willingness to speed the inevitable. But small inconsistencies lead her neighbor, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid of Scotland Yard, to a startling conclusion: Jasmine Dent was murdered. But if not for mercy, why would someone destroy a life already so fragile and doomed? As Kincaid and his capable and appealing assistant Sergeant Gemma James sift through the dead woman’s strange history, a troubling puzzle begins to take shape – a bizarre amalgam of good and evil, of charity and crime … and of the blinding passions that can drive the human animal to perform cruel and inhuman acts.
When Connor Swann, the dissolute son-in-law of renowned and influential Sir Gerald and Dame Caroline Atherton, is found floating in a Thames River lock, the circumstances eerily recall a strangely similar tragedy. Twenty years ago, the Ashertons’ young son, Matthew, a musical prodigy, drowned in a swollen stream while in the company of his sister Julia – Connor Swann’s wife.
Police Superintendant Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James quickly discover that Connor’s death was no accident, and that nothing in the Atherton family is as it seems. Connor, though estranged from Julia for more than a year, still lives in her London apartment, where his exploits with women and gambling suggest plenty of motives. The Ashertons are far more attached to Connor than to their own daughter, and these are only the first of the secrets that haunt the suspects. New lies cover older lies, as Kincaid finds himself dangerously drawn to Julia Swann, and Gemma must confront her own troubling feelings for Kincaid.
Tales of a Book Addict 