Necessary As Blood is the latest entry in Deborah Crombie’s New York Times Notable, Edgar, Agatha, and Macavity Awards-nominated mystery series featuring Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James. A Texan frequently compared to the masters of British crime fiction—including P.D. James, Martha Grimes, Barbara Vine, and fellow American Elizabeth George—Crombie dazzles once more with Necessary As Blood—a relentlessly suspenseful tale of a vanished mother, a murdered father, and a helpless, endangered child.

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in mid May, a young mother, Sandra Gilles, leaves her three-year-old daughter with a friend at the Columbia Road Flower Market, then vanishes. Shortly thereafter, her husband, imminently reliable Pakistani lawyer Naz Malik, disappears. Responding to an urgent plea from a close friend, Metropolitan Police Inspector Gemma James becomes involved in the investigation, although she has no official standing. And when one disappearance turns deadly, Gemma convinces her lover and former partner, Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, to take on the case. Working together again, Gemma, Duncan, Sergeant Doug Cullen, and DC Melody Talbot must stop a vicious killer and protect the child whose fate hangs in the balance.