As any regular reader of these blogs will realise I read a lot of crime fiction. Because of my interest in the fiction I also read some true crime and books about crime investigation, although they don’t make up a huge part of my reading diet. What Lies Beneath by Peter Faulding is a book by a search and rescue expert who specialises in retrieving evidence and people from hard to reach places, often underground. I think that I bought this book new because it sounded interesting.
The author has had, since childhood, experience in exploring caves, tunnels and mines. He took this interest, together with some time in the army reserves, and used the experience he had gained to start a company which assists the police, and others, in activities which need specialised help – this has become more prevalent in recent years as police forces have had to cut costs and no longer have these sorts of skills within their organisations. This book talks mainly about the author’s experiences when he has assisted the police but he does make it clear that he also does corporate work, which I suspect brings in the biggest part of his income – he also makes it clear on more than one occasion that he earns a very healthy income from this work.
It is fascinating to read about the places and environments where the author has worked. Quite a lot has been in water where bodies have to be retrieved. He has also worked in wells, old mines, caves and ancient tunnels. Often his searches don’t find what the police are looking for but this means that places can be ruled out, allowing the search to be concentrated elsewhere.
During his early working life there were many environmental protests, mainly relating to road building in country areas. The author became a specialist in removing protestors from places where they had tunnelled and then secured themselves. The protestors were very inventive in what they did to delay or prevent work taking place so the author had to be equally, or more, inventive in developing ways to release them without injury.
I was very interested in what the author had to say about the work that he did but there were occasions in this book where I felt that he presented himself as the only expert and cast aspersions on those who wanted to do things a different way. There is a sense of arrogance about the narrative, which may not have been intended but which occasionally alienated me – of course, to do this sort of work successfully you would need to have a huge amount of self-confidence.
I have decided not to keep this book because the way that it is written wasn’t to my taste, despite the fact that the content was fascinating, so I am unlikely to read it again. I shall pass it to Oxfam.
