This book lived on my TBR for ages — and with it having survived a few purges, I wanted to really go after the books that rode the promise train the longest.

The premise is an easy one. Duncan Kincaid, a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector, is finally taking a vacation. While on holiday at a friend's timeshare, a body is discovered in the hotel's whirlpool, and Kincaid tries to stay out of it. But with some long distance help from his boss, Gemma James, Kincaid finds the call of his career and the ineptitude of the local law enforcement too strong to ignore.

I liked this one a lot. Kincaid isn't too jaded or surly, like so many male detectives at the helm of an early 90s crime novel. The fact that he and his boss, Gemma James, really get on well and have a good working relationship before the events of the novel even unfold, only added to its appeal. I'll definitely be continuing with the series — though I am curious how Crombie handles the timeline of the books, advancements in real-world technology that would impact a detective story, and the publication range of dates. The two ends of that spectrum are Sue Grafton, whose detective Kinsey Millhone was still in the 80s at the time of the last novel, and Patricia Cornwell, whose medical examiner Kay Scarpetta fails to age appropriately given either the chronology in the books or the publication dates...and he little niece who's a child in the first book somehow ages so far up she gets close to being Scarpetta's peer when I abandoned it. So the longevity of this series, despite a delightful start, really depends on this factor for me and how well Crombie writes it.