Book Review: The Woman in the Water
Mar. 30th, 2018 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAlthough I generally love Charles Finch’s Charles Lenox mysteries (yes, he named his detective after himself. Just embrace it), I dragged my feet about reading the newest one, The Woman in the Water. It is (1) a prequel to the rest of the series, and (2) about a serial killer. Ugh. Have I told you how much I have come to hate serial killer mysteries? I am really pretty tired of mysteries about serial killers.
Also there was a previous serial killer in this series and that was one of the weaker books, IMO. Now admittedly the problem was partly serial killer but mostly the fact that Charlex Lenox was on a ship. Normally I am in favor of ships, but it took Lenox away from the usual cast of supporting characters and as much as I love Lenox himself, I’m really here because I love the whole gang and I want the whole gang or at least a large proportion of it. Which was another strike against The Woman in the Water, because how much of the gang did Lenox even know at the tender age of 23?
It turns out that the answer is “quite a bit of it.” In general this book has made me eat every doubtful word I had before I read it (“with some hot tea and a jam tart,” asevelyn_b put it); rarely have I been so happy to be so wrong about anything before. The book is delightful in every way.
The whole gang is not here, but we do get quite a few of its members, including an adorable appearance by ickle six-year-old Dallington, already a mischievous scamp at the tender age of six. Plus! Plus! We get to meet Mama and Papa Lenox, both of whom are dead by the time the series proper commences, and honestly just meeting them justified the entire notion of a prequel in the first place, how could I have even doubted.
But even if Mama and Papa Lenox were not so delightful, the Portrait of the Detective as a Young Man was also worth the price of admission. At 23 Lenox is still fresh from Oxford, practically wet behind the ears, raring to get started on this “private detective” business… only no one is really clear what a detective does or why an upper-class fellow with good opportunities is mucking about with it rather than going into Parliament or otherwise doing something normal. Even Scotland Yard thinks he’s hilarious.
(Side note: the infodump game remains as strong as ever in this book. There is one point where Finch stops the narrative dead to explain how Scotland Yard got its name. This is actually 100% the kind of thing that I want from my historical fiction, except maybe when it’s written by Victor Hugo, who sometimes takes a good thing just a bit too far. And then farther. And then adds another fifty pages on top of that….
Finch’s infodumps are a far more digestible half-page.)
There’s something very satisfying about seeing Lenox at this point when he’s young and still flailing in his career. The focus is far more on that than on the serial killer, although the serial killer does provide Lenox with his first chance to work with Scotland Yard (he is forced to accept a salary how will he ever live down this disgrace) so he’s not completely useless. And honestly I thought that plot wrapped up quite satisfactorily: mystery writers often seem to use serial killers as an excuse to be lazy (what’s the motive? He loves killing people, duh!) but this plot is actually quite clever.
And the moment when the serial killer ~threatens Lenox’s loved ones~ is far less prominent than the jacket description makes it sound. (I was expecting a hostage situation or something. This is also a mystery plot twist I’m not too fond of. It occurs to me that I may have weird mystery-reading priorities.)
I had mixed feelings about the fact that Lenox’s crush Elizabeth turns out to be his future wife Lady Jane, who at the time of the prequel is married to someone else, and using the name Elizabeth for weird British upper-class reasons.
On the one hand, yes, it is adorable that Lenox has been in love with Lady Jane for basically his whole life. On the other hand, I kind of liked the idea of Lenox having a passionate heartfelt love for a woman in his youth that went nowhere, and then he just got over it, like people do, and with time it faded into nothingness.
But on the whole, an excellent addition to one of my favorite current mystery series. There are a couple of books in the series that I don’t think are quite as strong, but the recent ones in particular have just been getting better and better as they go. Highly recommended if you like mysteries!
Would I recommend starting with this one? I’m not sure. It is a prequel, so it won’t spoil you for anything in the later books. On the other hand I do think the writing gets stronger as the series go (not that it’s one of those series where you have to wade through a book or two of dreck to get to the good stuff; it’s pretty good right from the beginning), so it might be a bit of a shock to the system to start here and then go on to A Beautiful Blue Death.
Also there was a previous serial killer in this series and that was one of the weaker books, IMO. Now admittedly the problem was partly serial killer but mostly the fact that Charlex Lenox was on a ship. Normally I am in favor of ships, but it took Lenox away from the usual cast of supporting characters and as much as I love Lenox himself, I’m really here because I love the whole gang and I want the whole gang or at least a large proportion of it. Which was another strike against The Woman in the Water, because how much of the gang did Lenox even know at the tender age of 23?
It turns out that the answer is “quite a bit of it.” In general this book has made me eat every doubtful word I had before I read it (“with some hot tea and a jam tart,” as
evelyn_b put it); rarely have I been so happy to be so wrong about anything before. The book is delightful in every way. The whole gang is not here, but we do get quite a few of its members, including an adorable appearance by ickle six-year-old Dallington, already a mischievous scamp at the tender age of six. Plus! Plus! We get to meet Mama and Papa Lenox, both of whom are dead by the time the series proper commences, and honestly just meeting them justified the entire notion of a prequel in the first place, how could I have even doubted.
But even if Mama and Papa Lenox were not so delightful, the Portrait of the Detective as a Young Man was also worth the price of admission. At 23 Lenox is still fresh from Oxford, practically wet behind the ears, raring to get started on this “private detective” business… only no one is really clear what a detective does or why an upper-class fellow with good opportunities is mucking about with it rather than going into Parliament or otherwise doing something normal. Even Scotland Yard thinks he’s hilarious.
(Side note: the infodump game remains as strong as ever in this book. There is one point where Finch stops the narrative dead to explain how Scotland Yard got its name. This is actually 100% the kind of thing that I want from my historical fiction, except maybe when it’s written by Victor Hugo, who sometimes takes a good thing just a bit too far. And then farther. And then adds another fifty pages on top of that….
Finch’s infodumps are a far more digestible half-page.)
There’s something very satisfying about seeing Lenox at this point when he’s young and still flailing in his career. The focus is far more on that than on the serial killer, although the serial killer does provide Lenox with his first chance to work with Scotland Yard (he is forced to accept a salary how will he ever live down this disgrace) so he’s not completely useless. And honestly I thought that plot wrapped up quite satisfactorily: mystery writers often seem to use serial killers as an excuse to be lazy (what’s the motive? He loves killing people, duh!) but this plot is actually quite clever.
And the moment when the serial killer ~threatens Lenox’s loved ones~ is far less prominent than the jacket description makes it sound. (I was expecting a hostage situation or something. This is also a mystery plot twist I’m not too fond of. It occurs to me that I may have weird mystery-reading priorities.)
I had mixed feelings about the fact that Lenox’s crush Elizabeth turns out to be his future wife Lady Jane, who at the time of the prequel is married to someone else, and using the name Elizabeth for weird British upper-class reasons.
On the one hand, yes, it is adorable that Lenox has been in love with Lady Jane for basically his whole life. On the other hand, I kind of liked the idea of Lenox having a passionate heartfelt love for a woman in his youth that went nowhere, and then he just got over it, like people do, and with time it faded into nothingness.
But on the whole, an excellent addition to one of my favorite current mystery series. There are a couple of books in the series that I don’t think are quite as strong, but the recent ones in particular have just been getting better and better as they go. Highly recommended if you like mysteries!
Would I recommend starting with this one? I’m not sure. It is a prequel, so it won’t spoil you for anything in the later books. On the other hand I do think the writing gets stronger as the series go (not that it’s one of those series where you have to wade through a book or two of dreck to get to the good stuff; it’s pretty good right from the beginning), so it might be a bit of a shock to the system to start here and then go on to A Beautiful Blue Death.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-31 02:49 am (UTC)....serial killers really are so done. I just can't even with them anymore.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-31 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-31 07:56 am (UTC)Do you not want 80+ pages on the architecture of Paris? Hugo assumes you must!
And, yes, serial killers is not my thing either. (The main book I can think of that I like about one is Christie's The ABC Murders. But then Christie usually kills a few people anyway so why not have a theme?)
I've never come across this series - I shall have to see if it's made it across the ocean or if Brits prefer it to be assumed that they know how Scotland Yard got its name.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-31 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-01 07:46 am (UTC)(*looks around shiftily* I skipped it and then counted the pages.)
no subject
Date: 2018-04-01 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-01 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-02 02:57 pm (UTC)I didn't love the Elizabeth reveal - not fair play at all, and it's a bit rich to have your idealized detective self only ever be in love with one person from childhood straight up through middle age. I know being a bit rich is Finch-Lenox's brand, but still. I felt a little bilked. And the explanation for why she was called Elizabeth was the kind of weird that might happen in real life, but no good for a last-minute surprise in a book.
(I did enjoy Janelizabeth's painfully no-nonsense response to Lenox's romancing).
And I can't help thinking that the crucial piece of neglected evidence underneath the flowers was just nonsense. I don't see any way it could have escaped notice for so long, in an already high-profile case, however overworked the morgue.
I guess it's a testament to how much I <3 the Most Comfortable Man in London that these seem like minor quibbles to me.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-03 04:04 pm (UTC)I was a bit more believing about the morgue thing because my impression is that nineteenth century morgues were pretty much terrible at everything. But clearly FinchLenox should have treated us to an infodump about the famous incompetence of the morgue, preferably with a bizarre case or two to illustrate, in order to set up the big reveal.
Or maybe i just want more infodumps and I care not how I get them. Either way! Surely any excuse for an infodump about morgues is a good excuse?