One thing often overlooked in contemporary crime fiction is just how tedious police investigations actually are: real crimes are generally solved only after weeks or months of drudgery and boredom, not in the high-stakes, ticking-clock style common to the genre. With his second Peter Cammon novel, Ottawa writer David Whellams scores something of a Pyhrric victory, effectively capturing this aspect of police work in a plot that is twisting and complex – once it finally gets going.

The Drowned Man opens with Cammon – the taciturn, brilliant former Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard first introduced in Whellams’ 2012 debut, Walking into the Ocean – once again being called out of quasi-retirement to handle what seems an almost insulting assignment: accompanying the body of a murdered Scotland Yard operative from Montreal back to England.

That assignment eventually spirals outward to incorporate bureaucratic infighting, multiple murders, Quebec’s sovereignty movement, letters from John Wilkes Booth, and the News of the World wiretapping scandal. In the course of his investigation, which also involves a ruthless femme fatale with a murky past and a plethora of identities, Cammon receives assistance from his daughter-in-law.

Whellams handles these diverse threads with aplomb in a novel that, while spanning continents and incorporating a large cast of characters, remains focused on the detective himself. This focus, however, is also something of a liability. The novel’s opening chapters drag as Cammon first weighs whether to accept the assignment, then makes tentative inroads with suspects, witnesses, and fellow law-enforcement officials. The material is well-written, and accurately captures the slow build of an investigation, but as a reading experience it’s ponderous and frustrating.

It is only when the perspective shifts, somewhat jarringly after about 140 pages, that the novel begins to develop real momentum. From there, The Drowned Man is a propulsive, sharply considered read, but the first quarter of the book may prove more than most readers are willing to plod through.