The Darkest Water by Mark Edwards

Published by Thomas & Mercer on April 16, 2024

In the small village of Drigg, someone buried local resident Leo James in a hole on the beach, leaving only his head above the sand. He drowned when the tide came in. DI Imogen Evans is charged with solving the crime. Evans was first and last seen in Mark Edwards’ 2017 novel, The Lucky Ones.

As Evans is searching Leo James’ home, she sees a young woman snooping around the back yard. The woman flees but later appears at Leo’s funeral, where she tries to flee again. The woman (Billie Whitehead) and her mother (Michelle) have more knowledge of the reclusive Leo than most people, but even they don’t know much about him.

In the same village, Calvin Matheson has started a coffee shop and bakery, but the shop is losing money. Calvin has no interest in social media, but with his wife’s help, he posts some videos to Instagram, including one that features an elderly woman proclaiming his cakes to be better than sex. The video goes viral (young people, it seems, love old people who talk about sex, how cute!) and triggers a wave of new business.

Many people respond to Calvin’s video, including a woman named Mel. Calvin answers each comment because he’s polite and assumes it will be good for business to interact with potential customers. Calvin’s wife Vicky thinks Calvin’s responses to Mel’s messages are a bit too flirtatious, although Calvin thinks he’s just being kind.

Mel ends up working at the shop when Calvin’s only employee is injured by an unidentified burglar. Vicky trusts Calvin but she’s displeased, primarily because she believes something is off about Mel. While there is good reason to suspect that Mel is obsessive to the point of derangement, Calvin tries to help her out with some young hooligans who harass her. When Calvin goes home after he’s unexpectedly delayed at Mel’s home, he finds that Vicky has disappeared. Did she get fed up and leave him or is she the victim of foul play?

All of this is a bit too much for DI Evans, who must deal with Leo’s murder, Vicky’s disappearance, Michelle’s violent husband, and eventually another murder. It’s also a bit much for Calvin, who is being accused on social media of doing away with Vicky. The lesson he learns is that social media might help you build your business but it houses a subset of lunatics who will eventually make your life hell.

Intermittent flashbacks tease out the story of Calvin’s sister Freya and her involvement with a drug-addled musician. Freya’s death devastated Calvin — he blames himself for not forcing her to make better choices — but it seems to have been equally traumatic for Calvin’s best friend James. Freya’s death is tangentially related to a dark secret that Calvin and James have kept hidden for thirty years. (It isn’t entirely dark, because the reader is meant to like Calvin, but their behavior is considerably less than exemplary.) Calvin lost touch with James after their unfortunate moment.

Is there one killer or more than one? Is Vicky still alive? Is Mel deranged? The story’s reveals are followed by a final gratuitous twist that, like many ultimate plot twists, serves no real purpose and detracts from the story’s credibility. Fortunately, the twist is not particularly important to the story and can be safely ignored. The nick-of-time appearance of a life-saving character doesn’t make much sense, but such is the nature of modern thrillers. An epilogue ties up loose ends and if the knots are difficult to believe, that’s better than leaving the threads dangling.

On the whole, The Darkest Water is nicely constructed. The reader will need to depend more on guesswork rather than clues to solve the mysteries, but the story moves quickly and the plot is always coherent.

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