The Water Room: Bryant and May, Book 2

Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May and their entourage are great detectives of the old school and their investigations are as peculiar as the criminals they come across. The stories are always captivating in their detail but I will never read one again.
I've come across the perfect couple in Fowler and Goodman. Tim Goodman's narrative is one of the best listens ever. The voice characterisations are truly inspired and simply reading the book will never be the same again so from now on it has to be Audible to get the best from this author.

Christopher Fowler's mystery The Water Room has a compelling plot featuring London almost as a character in its own right. In addition to a superbly crafted storyline and some great twists and turns, the narrative is littered with titbits about London's underground and lost rivers. Bryant and May, the elderly detectives from the Peculiar Crime Unit, are brought to life by Tim Goodman's voice characterisation, with Arthur Bryant in particular sounding exactly as he did in my imagination when I read the book some years ago. If you've not come across any of the Bryant and May books before, this is a great place to start.

OK, so this is not a work with a lively pace, but it has an originality that makes up for this and is certainly worth persevering with. Hitchens tries to build a three-dimensional cast with us seeing into their lives even when they are not obviously advancing the narrative. It's a pity that the first book in this series does not appear to be on Audible, as there are frequent references to it here. Many of the central characters here appear in other volumes of the series, set in time well before this one.

This is one of the most drawn out books, I have read for a long time The story line is poor, unless the listeners are obsessed with long lost rivers in London. It is well narrated, however, I can't recommend this story.

Bryant and May remind me of the TV show "New Tricks", with aging Policemen solving old crimes. The ages of our heroes however puts them to shame. They must be in their 80's surely. I first came across Bryant and May in one of Christopher Fowler's horror novels and instantly loved these two quirky characters. Being a non believer I love the fact that many of the seemingly supernatural events have a more down to earth explanation, but requires the intellect of our two heroes to get to it. The narration is excellent and really brings the characters to life. I am hooked on the series and will be listening to more.

Not that this book and the Rivers of London Trilogy are the same in terms of writing style, but the complex plot lines involving London's underground rivers, off-beat crime units in the depths of the Met and the whiff (in this case) of magic all made this book remind me strongly of the Rivers of London series - which is all about magic, basically.



Long passages in this book slightly lost me because I wasn't fully interested at times, but I think they were about building a picture of the main characters, which it vividly did. Could have been a bit shorter and still told a good tale. But I did enjoy it. Also I read them out of sequence having accidentally missed Book 1 - it didn't matter at all.



Well read. Good voices for each character, with an unhurried pace - much like the plot.