BOOKS: A missing wife and other brutalities

NECESSARY AS BLOOD
By Deborah Crombie
Morrow, $24.99, 384 pages

THE WATER’S EDGE
By Karin Fossum
Houghton Mifflin, $26, 249 pages

The kaleidoscopic scene of London’s East End is brought into sharp focus by its emphasis on a frightened and orphaned 2-year-old girl in Necessary as Blood (Morrow, $24.99, 384 pages), a most readable addition to Deborah Crombie’s mystery series.

She delivers a detailed and carefully researched account of a city scene haunted in the past by Jack the Ripper and still riddled with 21st-century crimes involving drugs and child abuse. Her use of a detailed street map of the old city enhances the graphic depiction of its history. Yet this time around, the author has deepened the psychological depths of her cast, giving insight into their characters that goes beyond their crime-fighting careers.

They are torn between the challenge of difficult and dangerous cases and the realization they cannot ignore the needs of their personal lives.

For example, Det. Sgt. Gemma James worries constantly about giving enough attention to a mother dying of cancer, while dealing with a family fight over how to prevent her (James’) wedding from turning into a circus. Her assistant is struggling with the problem of an unscrupulous father who owns a powerful newspaper and doesn’t hesitate to steal information for stories from his detective daughter. Yet the book is absorbed by the question of what to do with Charlotte, who hasn’t reached the age of 3 when her mother disappears and her father is murdered.

All she has left in the world is the kind of grandmother who is helping her criminal sons run heroin and doesn’t want her granddaughter because she is a despised “darkie,” the product of her artist daughter, Sandra, marrying Naz Palik, a Pakistani lawyer. Racism, child prostitution and drug dealing are part of the hard-edged world threatening the little girl.

What she does have, however, are the affection and protection of Scotland Yard in the form of Gemma James and her partner, Det. Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, who take her under the collective wing of their family to save her from another potential trauma with strangers in foster care.

The plot begins with the killing of Naz Palik and the investigation rapidly expands beyond his death to the still unexplained disappearance of his wife, Sandra, and the rising suspicion that she is also a victim. What the detectives find is the underside of the colorful neighborhood of Whitechapel.

Ms. Crombie captures the vivid atmosphere of the once-notorious part of London, its colorful flower markets and art galleries and its trendy nightlife. But as she moves through the mixture that blends the past with the present, Gemma James finds the darkness that lies not far below the lively social structure.

The story tightens as it becomes increasingly clear that little Charlotte is more than a tragic victim; she is one of the child targets of a killer who specializes in the prostitution and abuse of the young and has no hesitation about disposing of them when they no longer provide profit or satisfaction for him.

The personal lives of Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid are drawn more clearly than in Ms. Crombie’s previous accounts of their teamwork that were primarily involved with crime. She sensitively explores the problems to be resolved before Gemma can free herself from the unreasonable familial pressures placed upon her, and move on with her life. The resolution of the couple’s problems is the only spontaneously joyous moment of the book. That and the possibility of a happy ending for poor little Charlotte.

Almost unrelieved gloom permeates Karin Fossum’s The Water’s Edge (Houghton Mifflin, $26, 249 pages), a study of human frailties, with its emphasis on pedophilia and unhappy marriage.

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