Bleak Water

by Danuta Reah

Book Overview

Disturbing, atmospheric suspense novel from the author of Only Darkness, Silent Playgrounds and Night Angels: 'Dark, edgy and compelling' The Times Beyond the new city centre developments, the old... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0007116306
• ISBN13: 9780007116300
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Harper Collins
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.

Customer Reviews

British mystery

Eliza Eliot has been hired on at Second Sight Gallery as the curator by her former mentor, Jonathon Massey. With her she brings an exhibition calledThe Triumph of Death by upcoming artist Daniel Flynn, which features Brueghel's work of the same title. The canal outside the gallery has been called the canal of death - and Eliza is realizing quickly why - but will she survive the investigation? Eliza is mourning the death of her best friend Maggie while she is planning the exhibition, and she sees the signs of death everywhere. Eliza lives over the gallery in a flat that was barely finished. She has a neighbor named Cara Hobson who lives across the hall with her infant daughter. When the body of a girl is found down the towpath from the canal, Eliza is more concerned about its effect on the gallery's opening until she discovers that it is her neighbor. Cara's body is found exactly where Maggie's daughter Ellie was discovered dead four years ago. Once the investigation begins, everyone seems to realize how little they knew about the woman and her baby who lived in their midst. The depression and regeneration of the area in Sheffield where Eliza is living and working, builds a sense of drama. Eliza is struggling with the stress of the situations around her when she stumbles upon the body of a local missing teenager in the middle of the night. The police investigation is scattered, not sure if the two murders are connected to each other or even to the mysterious death of Ellie four years ago. The story is told from various points of view, but mostly from Eliza's. However, the switch in times with Eliza - her past in Madrid to her present in Sheffield - took some getting used to since the only indication was the place - not time. The reader is also introduced to characters without knowing how they fit into the storyline for almost half of the book. The author weaves the multiple characters and plots into an interesting story that doesn't come together until the last few chapters with some surprises. There were also some developments in relationships that happened suddenly which was quite a distraction to the reader. The British style of writing is quite different from American, and the writer is quite eloquent and able to weave a magical illusion of the scenes. I would recommend this mystery to people who enjoy expressive literature and art but who are able to tolerate violence and depredation.

Bleak and Feverish

If you don't have an ache, a cold, flu, fever, delirium, as I did when I first read this book, then when you finish it, you'll feel achy, feverish, wondering which part you dreamed, which was real, and how to get rid of the cold in your bones. Danuta Reah's writing induces such reactions. The cold, still, dank waters of the deserted canal that winds and twists this story into a nightmare will put a chill into you that you won't shake off soon. This feeling will linger, as you wonder who did what to whom, when, why? Art gallery curator Eliza Eliot is our peephole into this miasma. She is certain that the showing of Daniel Flynn's homage to Breughel called The Triumph of Death will place her gallery, and herself, firmly in the art world. Perceptions are skewed and distorted as Eliza hangs this exhibition. Murders start happening that seem to echo the theme of the piece. Eliza sleepwalks through it all in a haze of remembering her friend's dead child, attending her friend's funeral, dreamily sorting through images, both real and imagined. The exhibition is a celebration of death, and someone seeems to be celebrating it, mocking it, proving its supremacy, in eerie parallel to the exhibition, made up of photos of dead children and prostitutes, murdered, discarded, forgotten by all but the ones who cling to the memory of the deaths, ignoring the lives of those who are captured in moments of decay, casual destruction, amid the creeping impersonalization of the urban sprawl that expands and then contracts upon itself, leaving behind the warehouses, now housing art galleries, and the canals, "the veins of a corpse" one character says, no more or less guilty than any of the others in this very dark tale. What actually happened in this novel? Have a drink close at hand to ward off the chill and the fever, and maybe you'll have better luck in trying to sort it out. Eliza is a hapless witness, a curator who does not see what is right before her; Detective Constable Tina Barraclough is no clearer, blurring the lines between duty and self indulgence; her superior Roy Farnham gets a bit cloudy himself as he tries to extract the real from the imagined and the dreams of Eliza. No one is as they seem in this book. You need a warm fire, a bright light, a stiff drink to stave off the effects of this novel, if you can.