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Jan 19, 2018DorisWaggoner rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
In his first days as Commander of the Thames River Police, Monk has a lot to learn. His detecting skills are useful, but the life of the river is very different from that of the rest of the city of London. One day he and a police boat are patrolling the river, when they notice a couple on a bridge ahead in intense conversation. Suddenly, the two go over the edge into the icy water. They're able to pull both out of the river, but both have drowned. The question is whether their drownings are accidental, suicide, or even murder. The upper class woman, Mary, had lost her father to suicide 2 months before; she had been engaged to the man, Toby, until recently. What appears complex enough gets even more so when Monk and his crew learn that the competitive company Toby's family owns is working hard to build new tunnels under London. Old streams and springs lack maps, but water shifting and different kinds of soil make this work highly dangerous. Mary's engineer father thought the big engines being used added to the danger of collapse. Toby's brother is convinced they're working safely. More technical information than in many of Perry's Monk books, which slows things down at the beginning, but the excitement level picks up dramatically.