Ashes to Ashes

Recent widow Anne Peters presents a most unusual problem to Patrick Gillard, on leave from the National Crime Agency, and his police partner wife, Ingrid Langley, in Duffy’s entertaining 19th mystery featuring the crime-fighting pair (after 2014’s Dark Side). Anne, who lives in the same Somerset town as Patrick and Ingrid, claims that the cremains she received are not those of her late husband, Archie. The undertaker gave her a sack of metal body-replacement parts (hip joints, etc.) left unburned after Archie was supposedly cremated. But Archie had no such artificial parts. The dilemma piques the interest of a vacationing—in other words bored—Patrick, so he and Ingrid decide to investigate. Before long they discover there’s enough meat left on those artificial bones to share with a few local gendarmes and Patrick’s NCA boss. Despite unfamiliar slang such as sprog (a child) and yob (a common thug), a good mystery is a good mystery, and this is one. (June)