The Water Room (2004) by Christopher Fowler

I probably would have read Christopher Fowler’s The Water Room earlier, but for some reason I never saw it in bookstores. I would always see Full Dark House, but it was only a couple of months ago that I finally saw this in my normal used bookstore haunt.

The book opens with Benjamin Singh, a sometimes-consultant for the Peculiar Crimes Unit, asking Arthur Bryant to look into the odd death of his sister, Ruth. She died, apparently of a heart attack, in her basement. At first, it seems to be nothing more than a sad and slightly strange death, barring a slight injury to the back of her head, but Bryant finds that her mouth is full of water. River water to be exact. How did she ingest river water in her bone-dry basement?

Meanwhile, John May has a problem of his own. An academic acquaintance of his, Gareth Greenwood, has let himself be sucked into an illegal scheme involving London’s “lost” rivers. These are rivers that have been covered up by decades of construction and underneath the city; the Fleet is the most notable. What Greenwood is doing is anyone’s guess—perhaps being an accomplice to bank robbery—but it gives the PCU something to do and keeps their resources out of the greedy hands over their overseer.

Also tied in with this is Kallie Owen and her boyfriend, Paul, who move into Ruth Singh’s house. Kallie is looking forward to making a home of the place, but her renovation work is frustrated by Ruth’s overly large and dingy bathroom. She’s always hearing the sound of rushing water down there, and there’s a weird wet stain that sometimes appears on the wall…

Reading this plot thread, I was reminded that Fowler was mostly a horror writer until this series.

There’s a lot going on in this book. I didn’t even mention the homeless man lurking on Balaklava Street, or the other deaths that follow. Someone is butchering the residents of Ruth’s neighborhood, leaving no evidence behind when they do. And all the while, London is going through an unseasonable rainy period; Fowler never lets you forget about the ever present water that drones on and on, or the rivers below London. There's a lot of love for the city on display in the book. Fowler seizes any opportunity to drown the reader in arcane London facts, from interesting historical buildings to a lot of information on London’s water system that has subdued the lost rivers. When this works, it’s fascinating, but sometimes you feel like you’re getting a Wikipedia article every other paragraph.

So there’s good writing, but a weak mystery. First, I’ve seen this book labeled as an impossible crime, and it’s not. Ruth’s death is weird, but it’s never treated as an impossible crime (though the explanation for it is fine). There’s not much in the way of cluing. I wouldn’t be surprised if keen readers can make a good stab at the killer identity, but I would be shocked if anyone noticed all the clues and figured out their motive. Bryant’s explanation for the third murder involves a lot of “I guess” or “I’m pretty sure this is what the killer was thinking.” A big plot thread gets suddenly dropped until the ending of the book. But my main issue is that, once again, Fowler teases the reader wish fascinating esoterica and the motive has very little to do with it. It’s a little better than Full Dark House, and I was more satisfied with it, but I was still slightly disappointed. (ROT13: V guvax gung vs Sbjyre unq vzcyvrq gung gurer jnf fbzr zlfgvp vasyhrapr jbexvat ba gur xvyyre gb thvqr gurz gb qb jung gurl qvq, rira vs vg jnf whfg inthr uvagf, V jbhyq unir orra unccvre jvgu vg. Nf vg vf, vg’f nyy whfg n pbvapvqrapr.)

But was there anything good about this book? Yes, actually. This is our first look at Bryant and May as long-time partners, and I liked their dynamic. Bryant is like the great detective of yore; brilliant and knowledgeable but also prickly and rude. (Although there is an amusing chapter where he has to befriend the son of one of the families on the street and gives the kid the time of his life.) He’s always looking back to the past. Contrast this with May, who’s not only more technologically adapt and forward looking, but can read people better than Bryant can. He doesn’t do too much, and the final honor of the explanation goes to Bryant, but you see how they function as partners and how they complement each other. And like I said earlier, Fowler is a good writer with a deep love of London. You’ll learn something from this, I guarantee it.

So overall, I was slightly underwhelmed by The Water Room. The mystery was stronger than Fowler’s last book, and I don’t regret reading it, but it still wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Recommended, with Caveats, as the book is too high quality to dismiss outright, but those of you who only care about the mystery might want to look elsewhere. 

Other Reviews: The Grandest Game in the World, She Reads Novels.