I read crime novel after crime novel hoping I would absorb it through osmosis, and I didn't. ("Whodunnit" is probably here a misnomer; "crime novel" would be more appropriate, but even that's misleading. Plot workings that may work in a modern crime novel may not be appropriate for a Stone Age village society, where there's no such thing as a policeman.

(In any case, the murder story is only the surface-level plot; what the novel is about, on a deeper level, is how a civilisation could bootstrap underwater without access to fire, inspired by a discussion of this subject (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.arts.sf.science/browse_thread/thread/7b58694487725c43/6bc457e2eb041b4d?hl=en&q=%22Primitive+Science%22+group%3Arec.arts.sf.science&lnk=ol&) on rec.arts.sf.science in 2000.)

(Hmm, I'm increasingly beginning to think I need a writing icon, despite ostensibly having given up writing... Done!)