The Water Doesn't Lie (A Dalton and Gibb Investigation) by Kim Booth; Exciting Investigation But Dull Detectives

 

The Water Doesn't Lie (A Dalton and Gibb Investigation) by Kim Booth; Exciting Investigation But Dull Detectives

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Naturally I begin 2024 with a frequent trend found in many of my other reviews. Reading two books of the same genre who are direct polar opposites of each other. Indy Perro’s Journeyman and Kim Booth’s The Water Doesn’t Lie are both Murder Mysteries that emphasize separate components. Journeyman’s mystery plot concerning drug dealing, murder, and gang warfare is nowhere near as compelling as the personal struggles and frienemyship of its two leads, police detective Vincent Bayonne and ex-con, informant, and recent gang leader, Kane Kulpa. Booth’s book on the other hand excels at a mystery that is suspenseful and engaging but is unfortunately investigated by two detectives who so far are interchangeable and completely unidentifiable. 

In 1984, Thomas Ferguson, a young boy at the Lannercraig Children’s Home in Glasgow took his own life. Detective Sergeant Douglas Beattie and Detective Constable Jim Callender investigated the death and allegations of sexual and physical abuse at the children’s home. When they found out some prominent people were involved in covering up the allegations, they were ordered to drop the case. However, Callender and especially Beattie never let the case go and it continued to haunt them even into promotion and retirement. 

21  years later in Lincoln Central Lincolnshire, a dead man is found and appears to have been physically assaulted and drowned. He is identified as Father Patrick Burman and one of his previous places of employment was, you guessed it, the Lannercraig Children’s Home in Glasgow. Detective Sergeant Barry Dalton and Detective Inspector Alex Gibb investigate Burman’s murder and several other mysterious deaths of people affiliated with the Lannercraig case. They travel to Glasgow to solve the case and maybe deliver some long delayed justice to the perpetrators and their victims. 

The mystery in this book is compelling particularly when Dalton and Gibb arrive in Glasgow and pool their resources with Beattie and Callender. There is a sense that this case needed to be resolved and that its victims suffered tremendous pain and trauma not just from the abuse but the long wait for those who hurt them to seek some form of accountability. 

The detective’s interviews with the former children, now grown up but still hurting, are some of the most emotional passages. We see these characters deal with their trauma in different ways such as one who fell into a criminal life and saw no honest way out of it. Another tried to live as a successful business executive but it’s only a front for a still traumatized child who hasn’t yet come to terms with what happened. The abuse that they endured left painful physical and emotional scars to the point that the Reader hopes that the ones who hurt them and were murdered suffered horribly before their deaths. 

The emotional core is in the murder investigation but the characterization of the investigators leave something to be desired. Dalton and Gibb don't have a lot going for them. There is no discussion of their home lives or any information that makes them distinct. They are both married and one is a father and that's all we know about them. I know Booth probably wanted to move beyond typical detective tropes but that's no reason to make them boring. There really is nothing there about them.

It might just be me, but in reading Journeyman and The Water Doesn't Lie, I learned something. I can live with a book with a weak mystery but strong characters better than I can with a strong mystery but weak characters. Maybe because I look at it this way: anyone could solve the mystery in The Water Doesn’t Lie but not just anyone could solve the one in Journeyman. With Water Doesn’t Lie, one could replace Dalton and Gibb with any other investigators and it would still work just as well. But the mystery in Journeyman needed Vincent Bayonne and Kane Kulpa to solve it. No one else could do it. 

In fact, Water Doesn't Lie itself has a better investigation team in Beattie and Callender. With Beattie, we have the retiree who still wants to see justice done and is still haunted by that which is still unsolved. With Callender, there is the one still on the inside doing his best in a system that he knows is flawed and corrupt. I fantasized what it might have been like if the mystery involved them and not Dalton and Gibb, even perhaps separated by decades with Beattie taking the investigation in 1984 and Callender instead investigating in modern Glasgow. I am left to wonder, “Did they even need to go to Lincolnshire?”

A strong mystery is a great aspect to Water Doesn't Lie but it needs better detectives and more characterization so Dalton and Gibb don't end up as “One Book Wonders.”