Dreaming of the Bones

 Just finished Deborah Crombie's Dreaming of the Bones. I am very surprised at how long this took me to finish. It is an absolutely beautiful and lyrical mystery novel...seamlessly written. Perhaps I was taking my time because I didn't want the experience to be over? I found it amazing that Crombie adapted her writing style to the subject matter...the re-opening of a poet's death. The entire book read like a very long prose poem and the poetry she constructed to weave into the story of Lydia was perfect. Added to that, we fed my academic mystery obsession making for a near-perfect reading experience. My only quibble....I knew WAY early "whodunnit" and she didn't really provide enough clues to know why until the wrap-up. But then, she's a police procedural kind of author...not a writer following the rules of the Golden Age...so I guess I'll cut her some slack.

And, come to think of it, there's an oddity...I never expected to describe a police procedural as lyrical.