Review: FROM DOON WITH DEATH, Ruth Rendell

Arrow books, ISBN978-0-099-52476-2, 177 page. This edition published 2007. This book was first published in 1964. The 2 covers I've used here make an interesting comparison. The one with the lipstick is an early one, with clear connections with the book, while the one with the Celtic cross really doesn't mean much at all.

In six years of married life Ronald Parsons had never come home to an empty house. Margaret was always there, and after only an hour and a half of waiting, he approached Mike Burden who lived just down the road. Burden's new boss Chief Inspector Reg Wexford is of the opinion that Margaret has bolted, but he sets Burden to doing the usual checks, with no real results. Two days later Margaret's body is discovered in the woods on the outskirts of town, and that's when it becomes obvious that Margaret had a life, a history, that her husband knew nothing about.

Not only was FROM DOON WITH DEATH the first book in the Wexford series, it was Ruth Rendell's debut novel. I wrote recently how FROM DOON WITH DEATH is in some senses a "forgotten book" and I encourage you to read that post because of all the extra information it contains. This year the Wexford series of 22 titles comes to an end with THE MONSTER IN THE BOX.

In the history of the series, FROM DOON WITH DEATH was important because it introduced Wexford and Burden, and really broke new ground in crime fiction with the creation of a detective duo in what was essentially a police procedural. Interestingly Wexford is already 52 years old, and so Rendell is immediately faced with the problem of how to age her detective. As Reactions to Reading points out in her recent post, if he had been aged in real-time, a la Ian Rankin's Rebus, Wexford would now be 97. So I reckon Wexford and Burden only age 1 year every 5 or 6 years, although their children do grow up.

I don't think FROM DOON WITH DEATH is Rendell's best book. It has many signs that this is a debut novel. In addition to its comparative brevity, I think Rendell's understanding of police procedures is a bit limited. Wexford comes over with a coarseness that is considerably reduced in later books, where he and Burden are both given quite detailed back-stories, and elements of family interest. And speaking of elements, I think there is a gender element in FROM DOON WITH DEATH, and if you read the book you'll see what I mean, that must have been a bit of a jolt for crime fiction readers in the mid 1960s.

My rating: 4.2

There are many other things I could comment on but I'm going to save some of that for the discussion to take place on oz_mystery_readers in early August. Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine is listed as one of my favourite authors. I think she has made a huge contribution to the crime fiction genre.

Ruth Rendell (1930- ) was made CBE in 1996 and a life peer as Baroness Rendell of Babergh, near Aldeburgh in Suffolk in 1997. She sits in the House of Lords for Labour. She has many awards and honours.