The murder of Police Commander Alastair Gilbert compels Inspector Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James to bring their every investigative skill to bear and to reexamine their turbulent feelings for one another and their professional ethics. 20,000 first printing. Tour. Recipe for a perfect village murder mystery: Start with one pristine British hamlet, stir in the murder of the local police chief, add a shrewd local member of the clergy and a detective from Scotland Yard; season with a dash of clandestine romance. In her latest, Deborah Crombie cooks up the perfect example of the genre. In this offering the hamlet is called Holmbury St. Mary, the murder victim was a widely-hated bully and the vicar is a woman. A delicious concoction. The love affair Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James that began so uncertainly in the final pages of Leave the Grave Green (1995) is abruptly curtailed by the news that Superintendent Alastair Gilbert, the divisional commander down at Notting Dale, has been found dead in his kitchen. Some missing jewelry points to the burglar who for months has been taking the oddest trinkets from the villagers of Holmbury St. Mary. But there are deeper waters, too: Kincaid and James find little love for the scheming, manipulative Gilbert anywhere in the pacific village, from the wife who had grown out of love with him and into love with her business partner to the staff officer Gilbert had leapfrogged for promotion. The setting and characters are well drawn, if slightly pro forma, in Crombie's Texas British fashion, but few readers will be as surprised as Kincaid and James at the outcome. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Ms. Crombie keeps this series on its toes with her smooth procedural techniques and engagingly eccentric characters. -- The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio When Police Commander Alastair Gilbert is brutally murdered in his suburban Surrey home, Inspector Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James are drawn into a case that not only challenges their investigative skills but forces them to examine their ethics and their relationship with each other. On an evening in November, Gilbert is discovered bludgeoned to death in the kitchen of his home. Since there is no sign of forced entry, it appears that either Gilbert was taken by surprise or he was killed by someone he trusted. As the investigators delve into the case they learn that Gilbert was disliked in the village, especially by the owner of the local pub, whose son had apparently become the object of Gilbert's wrath. Combining subtle emotional nuances and psychological insights with a thorough knowledge4 of the intricacies of police procedure, author Deborah Crombie produces another powerful contemporary mystery in the classic tradition. Mourn Not Your Dead is a compelling page-turner of a mystery thriller! -- Midwest Book Review Used Book in Good Condition