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Whenever a publisher is courteous enough to contact me and offer me books, it's awkward when I turn around and say "I didn't like this book", but I gotta. I wanted to like Drowning In Hot Water -- a cop drama set in Chicago but I ended up impatiently skipping to the end. And while I'm anything but a prude, and never have objected to swearing or obscenity in a book, I was so totally fed up with the language in this book, that even skipping to the end didn't help. I can't remember a book so full of references to balls, in pointless ways, and so much endless, revolting name-calling, especially of women, I just didn't want to spend time here. Toward the end, in a critical violent scene, there were 3-6 swear words per page. Yeah, yeah, the guy was low-life scum, and was a dull revolting, tedious mess but we knew that already. Add to this a cop whose marriage bores her, who is considering an affair with a lawyer - a side story that goes on way too long, two tedious children who alternatively scream and yell and demand and whine, and a passive-aggressive husband who cares for the children by bribing them with sugar, I just didn't want to hear it. The main story is of a man found dead in Lake Michigan. Was he killed or did he fall in? That's unclear and I couldn't make it to the end of the book to find out what really happened; I stopped caring. We find out he had children by a woman who now lives with the above-described low-life scum; one of the children died, not too long ago. Was it an accident or was it murder? That's unclear. There's way too much mixed into this investigation, which is undertaken alone as Detective Carol Moore's partner is about to retire and is taking advantage of accrued sick leave. She encounters allegedly well-meaning social workers, who strike me as mealy-mouthed and unbelievable, abrasive prosecutors, who strikes me as way too annoying to be up as high as she is - oh, yeah, and annoying , inept fellow officers, and a tangled plot in which far too much attention is paid to a two-bit case and a three-bit investigation. I could not care about Moore's personal life - the family members are all unlikable - and the fuss made over the case, or the pushing the case into the corner doesn't make sense. The author blurb makes a great fuss over Patrick Murphy who apparently is a big deal in Illinois and the media - whenever there's a case needing the opinion of a Public Guardian, 60 Minutes calls Mr. Murphy. That doesn't make him a good fiction writer. He's a big deal in legal circles so I suspect he wants this book to reflect reality. If it does, I'm going to duck reality for a while and go hang out with the dust bunnies. It's way too ugly and filthy. I suspect positive reviews of this book will refer to it as "gritty". I tend to dislike grit and I sure disliked it here.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, February 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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