Product Description

A murder mystery, this novel is narrated by a 60-year old man who has just killed his wife. The plot then moves back in time to when the man was 22 and the story eventually reveals why he becomes a killer 40 years later.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #950151 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.com Review
"My wife of more than forty-five years shot herself yesterday afternoon. At least that is what the police assume, and I am playing the part of grieving widower with enthusiasm and success... It was I who killed her." Thus begins the much-hyped first novel by 20-year-old Oxford undergraduate Richard Mason. Your typical murder mystery The Drowning People is not, for we are given the identity of the killer--the who--immediately. The puzzle in this introspective novel is why--why did 70-year-old James Farrell murder his aristocratic wife, Sarah? The answer lies nearly 50 years into the past as the book ranges from Prague to London, from France to a remote castle in Cornwall. At its core is an intoxicating love affair between 22-year-old James, a talented violinist and hopeless romantic, and Ella Harewood, an American heiress to an English title, trapped by her heritage and destiny. A beautifully written exploration of self-absorbed first love and its tragic consequences, The Drowning People soars beyond the highest of expectations placed upon it. --Shannon Bingham, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly
The startling opening sentence (My wife of more than 45 years shot herself yesterday afternoon) and the compelling voice of narrator James Farrell draw the reader into the emotional vortex of this accomplished debut novel by a 20-year-old British writer. We learn immediately that his long marriage to Sarah Harcourt was not an affair of the heart for James. His love for Sarahs insecure, fragile cousin, Emma, is the substance of the flashback narrative, which deftly evokes the obsessive passion of first love, meanwhile alluding heavily to sin and guilt. When James meets Ella Harcourt he is about to graduate from Oxford, and to begin serious study of the violin. English-born but raised in America, Ella is heiress to the family seat, Seton Castle, which Sarah patently covets. Moreover, Ella has stolen the man Sarah loves, an eminently acceptable member of the English upper class, and is about to announce their engagement. Recognizing that they are meant for each other, Ella and James conspire to break the engagement, meanwhile meeting secretly and enjoying supreme happiness. They separate for a time when James goes to Prague with his generous and devoted friend Eric de Vaurigard, but Ellas needy nature requires proof of Jamess love, and his actions lead to betrayal and death. Mason is remarkably assured for a young writer, but he has not aimed his sights very high. This is essentially a romantic novel in the Du Maurier tradition, reproducing the portentous, elegiac tone and slowly revealed secrets of this seductive genre. Though Mason supplies clever plot twists, the suspense element is clothed in psychological trendiness: the source of Jamess dilemma is the plot device of too much fiction of late. And though Jamess ruminations on the emotional repression of the British privileged classes alert the reader to his crucial lack of maturity, his incessantly repeated claims of navet and innocence wear thin. Yet there is a large audience for a suspenseful, romantic story like this one, especially when it is told in literate and polished prose. Moreover, the photogenic Mason (and his Oxford accent) should make quite a hit on the talk shows. Major ad/promo; rights sold in Germany, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, France, Holland, Israel, Finland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Norway and Japan; Literary Guild alternate; Time Warner audio; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Last year, the British press went wild over Mason, an attractive, 19-year-old Oxford student who sold this first novel in a two-book deal for a record-breaking sum. Seventy-year-old James Farrell confesses on page one to having just killed his wife of 45 years. Farrell then recounts the events of his youth (in the late 1990s) that led to his act of cold justice. A promising violinist, James meets Ella Harcourt, a wealthy young woman already engaged. Their resulting affair encompasses betrayal, guilt, madness, revenge, and death. Its a classic tale, with Farrell carried blindly along on waves of passion (water imagery abounds) as the plot unfolds. While the novel seems a bit self-conscious at times, it is also refreshingly old-fashioned in its almost total lack of sexual detail. This and the Cornish setting may account for Masons being compared to Daphne du Maurier. Publicity alone will demand purchase by public libraries.
-Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A College Student's Perspective
Having recently finished reading Richard Mason's The Drowning People, I am amazed that the author was only eighteen when he wrote this novel. The plot Mason presents is fascinating, with multiple twists and turns that keep the pages turning. However, the author's age and lack of experience is revealed, I believe, in the lack of maturity and believability in his characters. While Mason exhibits a beautiful writing style and an ability to create a fascinating plot structure in The Drowning People, the characters, especially James and Ella, lack realistic and likeable characteristics. Because of this, I found the book to be an enjoyable read, but not a terribly thought-provoking or emotional experience. Mason is truly a magnificent writer. In fact, his writing seems too good for the petty subject matter of this novel. His descriptions are beautiful and allow the reader to share in what the characters see and feel. James describes Prague as, "a city of arched bridges; sharp steeples; gracious domes. Bathed in the morning light sharper and colder than the light of London, the mist rising from the Vltava was a brilliant, dreamy ribbon in the gray blanket of the city." It is Mason-created images like this that allow the sights and sounds of The Drowning People to come alive for the reader. While Mason's writing is generally excellent throughout the novel, his mode of creating suspense is both obvious and boring. While uncertainty is normally a welcomed element in a fictional work, Mason's version of suspense is obnoxious. There is a moment in the novel when Ella says to James, "I've done something I shouldn't have done, something I certainly shouldn't be telling you about." But rather than divulge what she has done, Mason writes two laborious and boring pages before he reveals the mystery. Mason does nothing but bore us from the point at which he arouses our curiosity until he supplies the information the reader hungers for. Unfortunately, useless and boring pages fill the gap, and by the time Mason divulges the secret, the reader has lost interest in it all together. The plot of the Drowning People is fascinating and shows that Mason has a unique and clever imagination. What a remarkable concept to begin a story with the aged narrator, reflecting on his past, telling the reader that, "My wife of more than forty-five years shot herself yesterday afternoon. At least that is what the police assume...I am the one that killed her." This is probably Mason's only successful attempt at creating effective suspense. It is unfortunate that the creative Mason fails to provide this very exceptional story line with exciting characters with whom the reader can relate to. The main characters in this novel, Ella and James, are unrealistic and difficult to like. For some of the wrongs they commit in this novel, James and Sarah feel almost no guilt. For others, they are grossly emotional. Ella and James also lack a realistic maturity that, while adding to the characterizations, annoys the reader terribly. For example, Ella offers James a challenge, in order for him to prove his love. This convoluted and sick dare, which comes at the expense of James' dearest friend, shows the immaturity of Ella for making it and James for accepting it. Their willingness to play "cutesy" love games at the amazingly high emotional expense of another friend is unusual and twisted. Rather than make the characters dynamic, it makes Ella and James seem too farfetched for reality. While well written, The Drowning People reads, in my opinion, more like a soap opera, at times, than a mature novel. The emotional roller coaster of this novel depends too much on unbelievable and uninteresting characters. In this work, however, Mason has shown readers that he is truly an author of great talent and promise. I am sure as he matures, so too will his writing.

Pretentious Drivel!
OK, let's give Mr. Mason credit for a damn good 2-page opening. It's the remaining 300 pages I have trouble with. First of all, the author is intellectually lazy. He wanted his protagonist to reminesce over the past 50 years but couldn't be bothered doing research on life in 1950 (don't forget that advance they were dangling in front of him), so he plops him down in 2040 without even a by-your-leave. After all, then he'd have to show a little creativity about life in the future. I don't know why so many reviewers said they couldn't believe the book was written by an 18 year old. It could ONLY have been written by an 18 year old! Only kids that age are involved in so much "philosophical", narcissistic, we're-different-from-the-rest-of-the-planet, self-absorbed navel-gazing. Blah, blah, blah, blah.....And this is where Mr. Mason shows his mediocrity as a writer. He continually describes what his characters are thinking, feeling, etc., but he doesn't have the ability to let them demonstrate his descriptions though their own words and actions. And then there's the story. Did you really believe Sarah's pathological hatred of Ella is based on Ella's snagging the most forgettable character in all literature (She should have thanked her!) Do you have any clue why James marred Sarah? And best of all--this was really a thigh-slapper--Did you really buy James' agreeing to have sex with his best male friend in order to prove to his fiancee that he wasn't homosexual? How many men are getting on that line! But,most sadly of all, I could have forgiven all of the above had there been a single word of wit or charm or grace. Daphne du Maurier indeed!

Dull - Long winded - predictable - juvenile
I have to admit that by the middle of this book I was skimming, hoping for some brief ray of light. There was so much boring fore-shadowing- chapters of predicting really bad things to come - that nothing short of mass murder could have lived up to that angst. Instead we get a "Duh" moment - any one who enjoys even the most banal mysteries was there before the book was. The author may be forgiven writing a bad book but who the heck agreed to publish this drivel?