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. Deborah Crombie's Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James novels have been nominated for the Agatha, Macavity and Edgar Awards and have received superb reviews. Deborah lives with her family in a small North Texas town. Visit her website at www.deborahcrombie.com
