The Water's Lovely
A stand-alone novel published by Hutchinson in 2006
This stand-alone story … is one of her most gleefully energetic efforts. And its powers of description and characterization place it far beyond the limits of a genre novel. This book is less a conventional crime story than a sly social comedy in which not everybody dies of natural causes.
Weeks went by when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring it back, or it would return in a dream. The dream began in the same way. She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following Heather’s lead through the bedroom to what was on the other side, not a bathroom in the dream but a chamber floored and walled in marble. In the middle of it was a glassy lake.
The white thing in the water floated towards her, its face submerged, and her mother said absurdly, “Don’t look!” The dead man was Ismay’s stepfather, Guy.
Notes
P.D. James and Ruth Rendell discuss the development of crime writing since the age of Agatha Christie and why it deserves to be taken as seriously as mainstream fiction.
I am an old lady who lives alone with two cats. I am not sure I would like anyone else to describe me like that, but I can do so myself and smile.
Ruth Rendell gives an insider’s view of life at 76.
Contemporary Reads 2
Arnaldur Indriðason - Silence Of The Grave
Sarah Waters - The Night Watch
Ann Cleeves - Raven Black
Robert Harris - Imperium
Simon Beckett - The Chemistry of Death
Debra Dean - The Madonnas of Leningrad
Sophie Hannah - Little Face
Footnotes
The New York Times, 2007 ↩︎
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