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In cold water >> A Hand in the Water is a hypnotic true-crime tale by JULIET WATERS
If you did, it would go something like this: "I was thrown overboard on the coast of England by an evil Canadian con man who had stolen my identity so that he could continue living with his 21-year-old daughter and their two children. After my body was discovered, not only was my Rolex still working, but the serial number helped the British police catch and convict my depraved, fraudulent and incestuous murderer." A Hand in the Water isn't Ronald Platt's story, it's his killer's--the now notorious Albert Walker, who was convicted in England less than two months ago. Platt's murder is doubtless the most interesting thing that ever happened in his nondescript life as a loner whose only crime was falling out of love with Canada. Walker's life, on the other hand, is a little too interesting. It was Platt's lifelong dream to move to Canada (he actually had a maple leaf tattoo on the same hand as his Rolex). However, soon after Platt achieved this dream, Walker--who'd been running from Interpol since 1990--assumed Platt's identity. When Platt grew disillusioned with the economic situation in Calgary and returned to England, Walker quickly got rid of him. Given how soon Bill Schiller's book on Walker appeared after his conviction, one might expect a hack job that would exploit the most tabloidish element of the case--the spectre of incest that hung over Walker, his daughter Sheena and the two children who have two of Walker's aliases on their birth certificates. But Schiller, the Toronto Star European bureau chief who broke the story internationally in 1996, has come out with a meticulously researched and well-crafted book that reads like something from the Truman Capote school of journalism. Subtitled "The Many Lies of Albert Walker," A Hand In the Water sticks as close as possible to Walker's point of view, from birth to conviction. Schiller refers to Walker as "Albert" (though he later refers to him as "Ron" and sometimes "David," in keeping with another of Walker's aliases, the redundant David Davis). Not only does this narrative tactic make the reader feel like they're inside Walker's head, but it creates an eerie sense of false intimacy throughout the book. Ironically, it's the same kind of bogus intimacy that Walker himself used to manipulate people. It's a hypnotic narrative strategy, and the story itself is so compelling that only the most critical reader will occasionally stop to question how Schiller could possibly know what Walker was thinking or feeling. It's also a strategy that subtly creates expectations that the fatherhood of Sheena's two children will be revealed. It never is, directly. But the circumstantial evidence is strong enough that Schiller never even has to mention the possibility to make his case. (Perhaps that's why Schiller thanks two separate law firms in his acknowledgments.) There are Walker's aliases on the birth certificates, but the most damning evidence is what is never found--a single person who remembers seeing Sheena alone with anyone other than her father during the six years they lived together in England. But the advantage of Schiller's intimate third-person point of view is that it humanizes Walker somewhat. The story starts and ends with a sense of Walker as a pathetic and pretentious child, desperately trying to escape life's banality by recreating himself as a true-life villain from an Agatha Christie novel. While A Hand in the Water may not have readers running out to buy a Rolex, it'll probably leave more than a few puzzling over just what makes evil tick. A Hand in the Water by Bill Schiller, Harper Collins, hc, 290 pp, $29.95
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"Every Rolex tells a story," boasts the Swiss watch company in its brochures. Read one of those brochures and you'll find true-life stories about watches that have survived ocean depths, alpine cliffs and the Vietnam War. But you will probably never find the story of Ronald Platt.