Boy in the Water

Boy in the Water is the Stephen Dobyns novel that takes him from his Saratoga-mystery comfort zone into more straight literary territory. Jim Hawthorne is a child psychologist arriving at a small New Hampshire boarding school to serve as headmaster, with the previous headmaster having died under what the trustees would like to call natural circumstances. The institution is more troubled than he has been told.

What Dobyns does with the premise is the patient thing. The book is interested in how an institution that has lost its way gets recognized by an outsider, and how the outsider learns the inside coalitions and the inside silences. The procedural-thriller machinery in the back third is competent but slightly imposed on what is otherwise a careful institutional novel.

Four stars. Recommended to readers who like literary fiction with crime-fiction structure. Not the entry point for Dobyns; the Saratoga mysteries are a better introduction to his voice.