DEEP WATER

A runaway wife angles for a new life but finds a body in a lake in this historical mystery.

In Hirko’s novel set in the 1940s, Hope Merriweather—a fan of flannel shirts and fishing—and her husband, Cy, a surgeon who fancies formal parties and tennis, “don’t know how to talk to each other.” After eight years of marriage, Hope leaves Cy and their home in Olympia, Washington, for the Lake Crescent cabin her father built two decades before, when she was 12 years old. Taking out the rowboat one morning to fish for silver trout, she finds the floating, blanket-wrapped body of a redheaded woman with showy clothes, ravaged toes, and no face. News of the corpse spreads fast. Sheriff Henry Taft, who retrieves the body, treats Hope suspiciously. The local shopkeeper pummels her with questions. Round-eyed Hoot Monahan, who lives in a shack near the water’s edge, is also overly curious. Had blueberry-eyed Spence Root, who has “more vices than a wood shop,” once romanced the redhead? Could the deceased be a barmaid who disappeared a while back? She had “sassy hips and naughty eyes.” Hope mourns the loss of the woman no one else seems to miss, feels compelled to learn her identity, and obsesses about possible reasons for her murder. Hirko deftly captures the tone of the ’40s, including a less-than-optimal attitude toward women. When it’s suggested the dead woman could have been a visiting botanist, a local says: “Beautiful women don’t study science. They study men. There’s more money in it.” Historical references are skillfully woven throughout—for example, Hope is involved in the Federal Writers’ Project, and there are many mentions of the region’s Native Americans. But also supplied is a long historical passage about baseball and World War II events that’s not organic to the tale. While strong descriptions and sharp dialogue fill these pages, distilling the storyline to make it more focused would have improved the book.

Readers looking for a thoughtful mystery won’t want this one to get away.