The Water Room (2004)

Love this series. Funny & smart. The reader, Tim Goodman, does a brilliant job. ( )

I'd rate the second Bryant & May mystery, The Water Room, as pretty ho-hum. The romance of London history and especially of the "lost rivers," though interesting enough, seems to overshadow anything having to do with character and motivation.

I've read scores of novels set in London, both contemporary and period, and never come across this aspect before except by way of occasional forays into canals and sewers. I can't fault the author for finding this history fascinating. But I have to take off points if it gets in the way of the story, and I think it did.

Not that the story was especially credible in its own right. Like the first of the series, Full Dark House, I think it stretches the meaning of "peculiar crimes" well into the realm of the preposterous. Perhaps the novels are best understood as fantasies.

The principal characters remain entertaining, if perhaps overdrawn, by which I mean that characterization seems to spill over into caricature a little too frequently.

My interest in continuing with the series is not particularly strong at the moment, but after a time I may give the third installment a try. ( )

Another Bryant and Mays mystery. It had a lot of charm but the mystery itself was fairly ridiculous.

book 2 ( )