This book was a good surprise to me. My mystery book club has a tendency to choose books that bore me, but this one is much more elegant than our usual choices. It's difficult to decide <i>exactly</i> when it takes place, but the general era is provided by the means of transportation: horses, trains, and boats (Victorian era). It's boats that grab most of the attention, as the river referenced in the title is to all intents and purposes a major character in the book.
Like a river, the action is a little meandering. Yet it all eventually comes together, tributaries combining to give us clues to the mystery. The “big" mystery is the little girl at the centre of the tale. Rescued, seemingly drowned, from the river by a seriously injured man. Restored to life in a mysterious way. Claimed or desired by many. Her existence is at the core of the plot.
This novel doesn't really conform to what I expect from the mystery genre. Appropriately, it is more like a tale told in a tavern. And that is exactly what happens to it—it is told and retold and tinkered with in the inn known as the Swan. This inn is where the action begins and the major players return to it repeatedly. Nevertheless, there are mysterious happenings during the tale. Setterfield ladles out the details slowly but steadily, letting the reader anticipate where things are headed. If you're like me, some of your assumptions are correct and others are proven false.
No police or detectives in sight, no one searching for forensic clues, this is a gentler kind of mystery. There is tragedy, there is violence, but the overall impression I received was that of gentleness and goodness conquering those negatives. All done in lovely writing.
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