Book description
Originally built to house the workers of Victorian London, Balaklava
Street is now an oasis in the heart of Kentish Town and ripe for
gentrification. But then the body of an elderly woman is found at
Number 5. Her death would appear to have been peaceful but for the
fact that her throat is full of river water. It falls to the Met's
Peculiar Crimes Unit, led by London's longest-serving detectives,
Arthur Bryant and John May, to search for something resembling a
logical solution.
Their initial investigations draw a blank and Bryant's attention is
diverted into strange and arcane new territory, while May finds
himself in hot water when he attempts to save the reputation of an
academic whose knowledge of the city's forgotten underground rivers
looks set to ruin his career. In the meantime, the new owner of Number
5 is increasingly unsettled by the damp in the basement of her home,
the particularly resilient spiders and the ghostly sound of rushing
water . . .
Pooling their information to investigate hitherto undiscovered
secrets of the city, Bryant and May make some sinister connections and
realize that, in a London filled with the rich, the poor and the
dispossessed, there's still something a desperate individual is
willing to kill for - and kill again to protect. With the PCU facing
an uncertain future, the death toll mounts and two of British
fiction's most enigmatic detectives must face madness, greed and
revenge, armed only with their wits, their own idiosyncratic practices
and a plentiful supply of boiled sweets, in a wickedly sinuous mystery
that goes to the heart of every London home.
Christopher Fowler is the acclaimed author of eleven novels,
including Roofworld, Spanky, Psychoville and Soho Black,
and nine collections of short stories including City Jitters,
Sharper Knives, Uncut, The Devil in Me and Demonized. He
is a director of the film-marketing company Creative Partnership and
lives in London with an incredibly unmotivated cat.
The Water Room is the second Bryant & May mystery, the
first, Full Dark House, is also published by Bantam Books and
the new Bryant & May mystery, Seventy Seven Clocks, is now
available from Doubleday.
www. booksattransworld. co. uk
