Book Review: A Bitter Feast

I've lived on a steady diet of mysteries and thrillers for over two decades, but after reading a few pages of Deborah Crombie's A Bitter Feast, I was hooked. Unfolding in the quaint setting of Cotswold village, the cozy mystery turns what was supposed to be a relaxing weekend for Scotland Yard Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his wife, Detective Inspector Gemma James, into a high-strung affair, after they are drawn into a complex tale of carefully concealed hidden motives and secret lives that paves the way for a startling, if not entirely unexpected, conclusion. The leisurely pace at which the mystery unfurls may seem glacial and ponderous, but a strong sense of place and the warm camaraderie shared between the core characters elevate this smoothly written whodunit above the workaday shocker.