Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury returns in a compelling novel， the 17th in Grimes s long-running series. Mickey Haggerty， Jury s old friend and colleague， is dying of cancer. So Jury can hardly refuse his request to look into what Mickey suspects is a 50-year-old case of switched identities. It surfaces when the last World War II bomb site in London is excavated for a new development， exposing the skeletal remains of a woman and infant. Mickey thinks the dead infant wasn t the baby of Kitty Riordan， Maisie Tynedale s nanny， as Kitty claimed， but was Maisie herself， the heiress to a brewery fortune. Did Kitty engineer the masquerade? And did Simon Croft， who was writing a book about London in the war years， discover it? When Croft is killed and his computer stolen， Jury sends his pal Melrose Plant to snoop around Tynedale Lodge disguised as a gardener. There he encounters a charming trio of amateurs: a homeless urchin and his extremely clever dog Sparky， and Gemma， a Tynedale ward whose mysterious background may hold the clue to Simon s murder as well as the still unsolved attempt on her young life. As usual， Plant s world of eccentric friends and relatives is nicely evoked in a subplot that leads him on a surprising holiday in Florence， during which he acquires just enough knowledge of Italian Renaissance painting to pull off another disguise on Jury s behalf. Grimes weaves the threads of this rich tapestry together in a surprise ending that not even Grimes aficionados will sense coming. But it s an appropriate conclusion， given the book s brooding tone， established in the opening pages by a dying friend s obsession and sustained as the investigation forces Jury to confront his own haunted memories of the war. This is a solid page turner， marked by Grimes s unerring sense of pacing， respectful but provocative poking around in Jury s soul， and topnotch storytelling ability. --Jane Adams