DEAD IN THE WATER

Daisy Dalrymple, energetic young heroine of this series set in the early ’20s (Damsel in Distress, 1997, etc.), is visiting the Henley-on-Thames country house of her aunt Lady Cheringham, and writing a story for an American magazine about the intercollegiate rowing events of the Thames Regatta. Her fiancÇ, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard, is to meet her there on the upcoming weekend. Meanwhile, her aunt and uncle’s daughter Patricia is in love with Rollo Frieth, captain of Oxford’s Ambrose College team, most of which is staying at the Cheringham house. It’s soon apparent to Daisy that team spirit is being eroded by the arrogant verbal attacks directed by nasty Basil DeLancy at coxswain Horace Bott, whose only sin is that he’s middle class and from the Midlands. When DeLancy falls overboard and dies, in a qualifying race, Alec finds himself confronting a case of murder instead of the peaceful weekend he and Daisy had envisioned. Awash in dull characters, wordy interviews, silly encounters, and unconvincing motives: only the riverside scene is worth time spent here. As Daisy might say, not very ’spiffing.—