Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie

May 22, 2007 at 5:24 pm (Anglophilia, Book review, The British police procedural)

I recently read Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie, and while I enjoyed it in general, I had some reservations. First of all, at 400 pages, it was simply too long. The plot became attenuated, and it became increasingly difficult for the reader – this reader, anyhow – to stay invested in the murder investigation (two murders, actually). On the other hand, the leisurely pace allows for in depth character development, a quality that I know is prized by fans of this series of procedurals. Crombie’s prose is quite fine; she is exceptionally good at writing dialog. She limns adolescents in a completely convincing way. This is not an easy as the flood of young adult fiction currently on the market would have you believe.

Beside the appealing characters, the major element that this novel has going for it is the setting: Cheshire, England, the childhood home of series protagonist DCI Duncan Kincaid of New Scotland Yard. This is an area of “the old country” that I know nothing about; I had to consult a map to pin down its location. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire

There is much lore about canals and canal boats, also called narrow boats, that was genuinely fascinating. I was not aware, for instance, that there exists a means whereby these boats navigate from one side of a river to another while suspended more than a hundred feet above the river valley! The structure that allows them to perform this seemingly impossible feat is called the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct; it carried the Llangollen Canal over the River Dee. http://preview.tinyurl.com/5geg5 When I first read about this, I thought I could not possibly be understanding the set-up correctly. The aqueduct is rightly recognized as an engineering marvel.

England, to me, is like Dr. Who’s Tardis: it seems so much bigger on the inside than on the outside. How can such a tiny island be so full of treasures? Can one ever truly know them?