Danger lurks in Hawkins’ ‘Water’

Is it really fair of Paula Hawkins to conjure up a menacing body of water just as beach season beckons? There are no sharks, à la Jaws, in Into the Water (Riverhead, 388 pp., out of four), other than the human sharks who lurk in the English riverside town of Beckford in this succulent new mystery by the author of The Girl on the Train.

Train, a debut psychological thriller, barreled out of nowhere to sell 19 million copies worldwide. Now Hawkins faces a tsunami of expectations with her follow-up to that twisty, voyeuristic tale of an alcoholic divorcee entangled in a possible murder.

The British author makes some perplexing choices early on that threaten to sink Into the

Water in a sea of confusion: More than a dozen narrators. Shifts back and forth in time. Lots and lots of drowned girls.

Pay attention, because the various plot currents eventually converge, and then Into the

Water takes off with a rush. The novel begins with Jules (Julia) Abbott being summoned back to Beckford after her estranged sister, Nel, is found dead in the “Drowning Pool,” as the infamous bend in the town’s river is called. Did Nel, a photographer and writer who was investigating the Drowning Pool’s many female victims (including 17th-century “witches”), jump, slip or was she pushed?

Left behind is Nel’s hostile 15year-old daughter, Lena, whose best friend committed suicide at the same place just weeks earlier.

Like Girl on the Train, this is a story disturbingly rife with misogyny and violence against women. Among the creeps with possible motives are Patrick Townsend, a retired cop whose wife died years earlier at the Drowning Pool; Patrick’s son, Sean, who has inherited his old man’s profession and perhaps predilections; and Mark Henderson, a handsome high school teacher who takes Lolita a little too literally.

So do dive in. The payoff is a socko ending, and a noirish beach read that might make you think twice about dipping a toe in those dark, chilly waters.