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Dr Joseph Bell was the real-life inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was a young doctor when he knew Bell and in David Pirie's fictional account of their times together, he plays a Watson-like role to the master of the new art of detection. THE DARK WATER has Dr Joseph Bell and Arthur Conan Doyle on the trail of a madman, master criminal and murderer, Dr Thomas Neill Cream. At the beginning of the story, Cream has kidnapped Doyle and is keeping him drugged in an isolated cabin. Cream informs Doyle that he fully intends to kill him after torturing him and that spurs Doyle to make a difficult escape to get back to Bell and inform him that Cream is in England again, doing dastardly deeds. Bell sees that Doyle is right when Cream sets Doyle up for a murder Cream commits when he kills an innocent man who helped Doyle get away. Following clues about a strange disappearance of a wealthy man, they travel to a small crumbling town set by a cliff over the sea. Along with the missing man is the re-emergence of a local story about a witch who seeks revenge on that town. Bell and Doyle unearth clues that Cream is in the vicinity, though hidden somewhere. As they investigate, people are soon murdered in horrific ways, making both men work even harder to gather clues to try to stop the madman. THE DARK WATER is written in the exact style of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. It's old fashioned in tone and language and the description of the location is dark and brooding. Much about this book is wonderful. I liked the idea of Bell being the real-life inspiration to Doyle of his Holmes character. I enjoyed the old-fashioned feel of the book and the almost Gothic tone of the story. Unfortunately, the middle part of the book suddenly became very slow. I know that the original Holmes books went into how to read coded messages, and I'm sure many people might think that reading dry pages of how to crack codes might be entertaining, but I just got bored when the story stopped cold and the coded notes suddenly became important to the tale. The story didn’t balance on code-breaking and the solution to one of the mysteries was evident without the secret notes. I found the slow, dry middle section almost impossible to get through. There's a lot to like about THE DARK WATER. By the time I finished, I saw that the mystery was well done and satisfying. I just wish the middle section didn't drag so.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, September 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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