Elderly Ruth Singh, smartly dressed, is sitting in a chair, feet together, hands in her lap, as if ready to ready to make a shopping trip. Except, she's found in her basement, not her parlour, and her head is titled back. Though dry as bone, she has apparently drowned and there is muddy Thames water in her mouth. Time to call in the Peculiar Crimes Unit and the also quite elderly John May and Arthur Bryant to solve this "locked room" mystery in tale number two,
The Water Room, by Christopher Fowler.
It's a deliciously curvy, twisty story, centered on Balakava Street, once the homes of railway workers, and now in various stages of decay featuring an odd collection of gentry, yuppies, students and those who have never moved out since the end of WWII. There's even a small woodworking factory at one end of the street, a handsome gay couple occupying one of the homes and a local tramp who calls this particular street his home. As the title implies, water is serious theme here: not only does it seems to rain without stopping throughout the events of several days, we are treated to a history of London's river systems as they are gradually over-run by mankind, buried, diverted and turned into a complex system of storm drains.
The detective duo of Bryant and May, one socially ept, the other curmudgeonly by choice, display a fondness and respect for one another that emerges in their actions and witty dialogue. If some of the gimmicks wear a little thin (supporting characters of equal age or their 50s-something children filling the same roles in the unit and the dovetaling of Bryant's eccentric interest in the occult and witches playing a role in tying up loose-ends), its hard to begrudge the author these sleights of hand when the story "leaks out" do delightfully.
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