Every now and then, the most unlikeable characters, and — in this case one or two despicable characters– grab me and instead of dropping a book with a loud, “Enough!” I read it to the fascinating end. The Drowned opens with Denton Wymes (pronounced “Weems”) walking his dog on a beach in the evening. He spots an expensive car in a field, the door open, no one in it. But all too soon a man runs toward him, shouting for help. He was arguing with his wife and he believes she jumped off a cliff to her death in the nearby sea. Armitage, the husband, involves Wymes, a desperate loner who wants nothing to do with the world, in his problem and off they go to a nearby house with a very odd couple and their very odd four year old who eventually call the Guarda. We are in Ireland. Detective Inspector Strafford becomes involved. He’s a grumpy, stodgy, very flawed, yet oddly compassionate man. Strafford is dating Phoebe, daughter of a local doctor and his sometime collaborator, Quirk.. Strafford’s wife has met someone and asks for a divorce. The Chief Inspector is dying and we are inside his head as he muses about all this and the various characters he must interview about Armitage’s wife’s disappearance.
Along the way there is another disappearance. Will bodies or lost people be found? Will Strafford commit to Phoebe despite her father’s disapproval and her free spirit. Will she commit to him? What does one owe a dying friend/boss. What happened on the cliffs and why did it seem that the couple who helped out with the use of their phone know something? The drowned is written so well that the incredibly unlikeable characters are humanized and understandable. Its characters are real. Strafford is a great character who I have not previously met. This is the fourth entry in the series. I suspect the average ratings have to do with taste in characters as the writing and plotting is well wrought. I might go back and read the earlier entries.
They Called me Bookworm 