It is a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour for Dead in the Water by Simon Bower today.
Before we get started - the ebook version of Dead in the Water is FREE this week (until July the 6th I believe). Get it while you can!
Simon Bower is a British and Canadian author born in Berkshire in 1973. Since 1998, he’s adopted a global lifestyle, setting up home at times in Europe, Africa and North America. In 2016 Simon turned to writing full time, which led to his first published work, Dead in the Water, being released in paperback and eBook by Middle Farm Press in 2018. Simon currently lives in France, near the Swiss border, where his young family, mountains, acrylic paint and sharpened skis keep him in regular mischief.
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About the book
Was it murder, suicide or an accident? Who will be next to die?
Six international friends all appear to be successful, albeit to different levels. A human rights’ lawyer, an IT geek, a businessman, a waitress, a phone guy and a physiotherapist. None of them are known to the police.
One of them must know what happened that fateful night on the catamaran.
Agent Georges Fournier is assigned the case in the French resort town near Antibes. He’s short on time, with a growing health problem and a District Attorney who just wants the case closed as accidental. But he’s not letting go.
Chrissie is a single mother and respected flight attendant in New York. When she finds out who her father is, she’s ecstatic and wants to meet him.
But within a week she’d wish she’d never known.
Charlie thinks his ship has come in when he meets Ana. He is bored, she is beautiful and the location is exotic. One thing leads to another and a toxic relationship is born from it, although one could argue that Charlie would have made certain decisions regardless of whether he met Ana, right?
What becomes clear quite early on is how Charlie believes life owes him some kind of favour. There is no real sense of regret or remorse, in fact it is always someone elses's fault. Ana made him, Len deserves it, Mia shouldn't be so needy. There is no culpability and always an excuse.
I'm not sure if it is intentional, but the yacht scenes were very Christie whodunnit with a whiff of Natalie Wood salacious mystery thrown in for free. It's interesting because you get the volatility of a modern crime, but feel as if you are also reading a 'the professor killed him with a candlestick in the library' kind of crime.
The reckless and ruthless ploys of the killer bring a strong feeling of violence and chaos to the story, which is equalled out by the laissez-faire attitude of the police detective. You think he has left the potential crime to sink into obscurity when all of a sudden he pops up again.
I will say that although each character was given a voice of their own in individual chapters, it sometimes felt disjointed. The lead up to the last potential victim was too long and at times her story felt too outside the main plot.
What Bower does do well is capture the essence of two people who separately would probably never harm anyone, and yet brought together they become a lethal weapon. This, although it seems quite an unimportant element, is actually the main driving force behind the majority of violent crimes. The question is whether individuals in these situations would have committed crimes if they hadn't become part of a toxic and co-dependent killing team.
I guess this killer will never know, but then this killer would probably blame it on the victim instead.
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Publisher: Middle Farm Press (pub date: May 2018)
Paperback edition
Buy Dead in the Water at Waterstones
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