Favourite Authors - #5 Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine

The idea of this mini-project is to list crime fiction authors that I look forward to reading. These are authors that I will buy without question if I see a title I haven't yet read. So in a sense to give them a number is deceptive. I would imagine that there are at least 20 authors in my database who come into this category. It also gives me a chance to print some of my mini-reviews that haven't been published before. This is a project that I will continue randomly throughout 2008.

Previously listed

• #1 Peter Lovesey
• #2 Karin Fossum
• #3 Donna Leon
• #4 Simon Brett
  

One of the advantages with Ruth Rendell is that she writes under 2 names, and writes the Wexford series, and stand-alones.
Every respectable library will have lots of titles.
I've listed the records in my database in publication order.
If you want a full list of her remarkable output see Fantastic Fiction:
Ruth Rendell
Barbara Vine
Output has slowed down in recent years, but there are omnibus re-printings to look for.
Ruth Rendell is 78 this year (2008)
My enjoyment is indicated by my ratings, a value with a maximum of 5.0

Ruth Rendell titles

THE FEVER TREE AND OTHER STORIES (1982), 4.8
Contains 11 stories: The Fever Tree, The Dreadful Day Of Judgement, A Glowing Future, An Outside Interest, A Case Of Coincidence, Thornapple' (novella), May And June, A Needle For The Devil, Front Seat, Paintbox Place and The Wrong Category.

END IN TEARS (2005), 4.8
In the early hours of the morning George Marshalson is waiting anxiously for his young daughter to come home. His discovery of her body at dawn not far from the house is the beginning of a new case for Reg Wexford and the Kingsmarkham CID team. Neither Reg nor his assistant Mike Burden are getting any younger and both are a bit old-fashioned in their attitudes and their policing methods. In this, the 20th book in the Wexford series that began in 1964, award winning author Ruth Rendell introduces the new face of policing in Britain in the persons of the latest additions to the team, Bal and Hannah. And again Rendell gives this book a contemporary setting by weaving into it a theme that has been of world-wide community concern. The Wexford family interest continues too when daughter Sylvia becomes pregnant by her ex-husband.

THE WATER'S LOVELY (2006), 4.7
Ruth Rendell never disappoints me. Sisters Ismay and Heather Sealand live in the bottom half of a house in suburban London and their mother and aunt live in the upper floor. Nine years before their stepfather Guy was drowned in the bath upstairs and Ismay and her mother have always thought Heather was responsible, although they hid their suspicions from the police, and gave Heather, 11 at the time, an alibi. After the verdict of accidental drowning, the matter was never discussed again but Ismay has always thought of Heather as a murderer. She thinks Heather drowned Guy in order to protect her. Ismay wonders whether she should warn Heather's new friend Edmund about Heather's possessiveness.

NOT IN THE FLESH (2007), 4.8
Honey the dog is a wonderful hunter for truffles. But this time she unearths something even less savoury - a human hand. Another case for the inveterate duo Reg Wexford and Mike Burden. The body is male, and has been there for over 10 years, wrapped in a purple bed sheet. In this story Reg Wexford seems to be a little less clearly drawn and we learn more about the dynamics of the team he works with. The plot is a spider web of threads. It is all about degrees of separation, those threads that draw us together. And running through all the murder mysteries, missing persons and threads of deception, something else Rendell has on her mind - female circumcision, ritual genital mutilation of young immigrant children, providing a rich undercurrent, showing Rendell as aware of the issues of her times as ever.

COLLECTED STORIES (2007), 4.6
Ruth Rendell's COLLECTED STORIES is an omnibus of three previously published collections: The Fallen Curtain and Other Stories (1976), Means of Evil and Other Stories (1979), and The Fever Tree and Other Stories (1982). Some of the stories have appeared individually and in other collections, all over twenty-five years ago. Many of them were first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Few authors specialise in the short story today, and each of these twenty-seven stories convinces the reader what a consummate writer of this genre Rendell is. She explores a range of topics: the boy abducted by a Man, the false evidence that convicts a man of murder, a boy's distillation of a vegetable poison, death by knitting needle, the serial killer charged with a murder he didn't commit, the killer-for-hire foiled by his love of dogs, the woman who tried suicide once too often, and more. Most of the stories stand alone, but the five in Means of Evil and Other Stories all feature Reg Wexford and Mike Burden, Rendell's central characters from the much loved Wexford series.

Writing as Barbara Vine

NO NIGHT IS TOO LONG (1994), 4.0
Tim Cornish thought he'd gotten away with murder. For months after he'd killed his lover off the Alaskan coast, there hadn't been a word about the murder. But then the letters started to arrive, giving intimate details of the murder. It seems that someone knows what Tim has done.

THE MINOTAUR (2005), 5.0
An excellent read. Always has you on the edge of your seat with hints about what is to come. It is the 1960s, but the “swinging sixties” revolution hasn't quite reached rural England. In an attempt to be closer to her English boyfriend, Kerstin Kvist accepts a job with the Cosway matriarch; her three unmarried daughters; and her son, John, a sad, self-absorbed figure in his thirties who haunts the grand house of Lydstep Old Hall, deep in the Essex countryside. There is a fourth daughter, too—a widow herself and apparently quite rich—who comes and goes infrequently, with ill-disguised contempt for the others. Then, just as Kerstin is beginning to figure out the odd family, a stranger moves into the village, his very presence setting the Cosways on a path to self-destruction.

Review: A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES, Ruth Rendell

• this edition published by Chivers Press in large print 2000
• originally published 1998
• ISBN 0-7450-2250-1
• 436 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Random House Australia)

In traditional fairy tales the handsome prince rescues the beautiful princess from her wicked stepmother, and the couple live happily ever after.But in Ruth Rendell's dark and damaged contemporary universe, innocent dreams can turn into the most terrible nightmares.Teddy Brex emerges from a loveless, isolated childhood as a handsome but autistic young man. Francine Hill, traumatised by the murder of her mother, grows into a beautiful young woman, who must endure the overprotectiveness of an increasingly obsessive stepmother.Teddy Brex does ride to her rescue, but he is a man who has already committed two murders.

My take

Although the sequel to this novel THE VAULT is a 2011 addition to the Wexford series, A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES was written as a stand alone, and could so easily have been published as a Barbara Vine title.

I'm sure I have read it before, but had really forgotten most of it, although I knew a large part of the final plot because of reading THE VAULT earlier this year.

It feels quite a long novel as Rendell details the loveless childhood of Teddy Brex and the trauma that surrounds that of Francine Hill. That these two plot strands will converge is not a surprise to the reader but the manner of their coming together may be.

If you haven't yet read THE VAULT I suggest you try to track down a copy of  SIGHT FOR SORE EYES first even if only because THE VAULT contains plot spoilers, and you will get a much better appreciation of what Ruth Rendell has achieved in writing the sequel by reading them "in order". In essence the ending of A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES left room for the sequel but probably none of her followers realised that. I don't know if there is another author who has done anything similar - written a stand-alone story and then followed it up with a sequel written as part of an ongoing, long standing, series.

On its own A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES is a satisfying if somewhat macabre story about damage to children. At the end Rendell serves out a sort of justice.

My rating: 4.5  

I have also made this post my contribution this week to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books

Followers of Rendell will be interested to know that she is publishing another stand-alone later this year. (let me just remind you that she is 82)

Blurb from Fantastic Fiction.
From three-time Edgar Award-winning mystery writer Ruth Rendell comes a captivating and expertly plotted tale of residents and servants on one block of a posh London street - and the deadly ways their lives intertwine.

Life in the well-manicured London locale of Hexam Place is not as placid and orderly as it appears. Behind the tranquil gardens and polished entryways, relationships between servants and their employers are set to combust.

Henry, the handsome valet to Lord Studley, is sleeping with both the Lord's wife and his university-age daughter. Montserrate, the Still family's lazy au pair, is helping to hide Mrs. Still's illicit affair with a television actor - for a small fee. June, the haughty housekeeper to a princess of dubious origin, is hard at work forming a 'society' for servants to address complaints about their employers. Meanwhile, a disturbed gardener, Dex, believes a voice in his cellphone is giving him godlike instructions - that could endanger the lives of all who reside in Hexam Place.

A deeply observed and suspenseful update to the upstairs/downstairs genre, The St. Zita Society is Ruth Rendell at her incisive best.

Review: FROM DOON WITH DEATH, Ruth Rendell

• 
   This edition read as an e-book on Kindle (Amazon)
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0031RSBQO
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cornerstone Digital; Special edition (January 26, 2010)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 26, 2010
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 214 pages
• #1 in the Inspector Wexford series  

Synopsis  (Amazon)

AN ORDINARY LIFE. AN EXTRAORDINARY DEATH.

The trampled grass led to the body of Margaret Parsons.

With no useful clues and a victim known only for her mundane life, Chief Inspector Wexford is baffled until he discovers Margaret's dark secret - a collection of rare books, each inscribed from a secret lover and signed only as 'Doon'.

Who is Doon? And could the answer hold the key to Wexford solving his first case?

My Take

My first review of FROM DOON WITH DEATH on this blog is from 2009 but I had read it earlier than that. I have re-read it this time for discussion with my U3A Crime Fiction group. I have chosen Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine as one of our Award winning crime fiction writers.

This is the first of the Wexford series, the first of 24 novels, published between 1964 and 2013, a period of 49 years. Wexford is a mature detective at the beginning of this series, already 52 years old. His sidekick Inspector Mike Burden is younger but also reasonably mature.

Ruth Rendell always said that she wished Wexford had been younger at the start of the series.

There are almost no clues to who murdered Margaret Parsons and I think the solution must have shocked readers back in 1964. Rendell leads the reader carefully to some conclusions about the nature of the killer, although the final reveal still has elements to shock.

There is almost none of Wexford's personal life in this novel. He and Burden spend huge amounts of time, some overnighters, investigating the case.

My rating: 4.6

You might also be interested in

Forgotten Book: FROM DOON WITH DEATH, Ruth Rendell

 I have also read

Rendell, Ruth:
FROM DOON WITH DEATH - Wexford #1
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH- Wexford #2
4.6, THE BEST MAN TO DIE - Wexford #4
4.3, A SLEEPING LIFE, Ruth Rendell  - Wexford #10 
4.7, PUT ON BY CUNNING - Wexford #11
4.6, THE VAULT- Wexford #23
4.5, NO MAN'S NIGHTINGALE- Wexford #24
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
4.5, A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
4.5, THE SAINT ZITA SOCIETY
4.6, THE MASTER OF THE MOOR
4.4, DARK CORNERS
4.6, A SPOT OF FOLLY  

Vine, Barbara:
THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT
4.8, A DARK ADAPTED EYE
4.3, THE CHILD'S CHILD

4.7, THE BLOOD DOCTOR, Barbara  

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.

Review: DARK CORNERS, Ruth Rendell

• available from Amazon for Kindle
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (October 27, 2015)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1501119427
• ISBN-13: 978-1501119422

Synopsis (Amazon)

When his father dies, Carl Martin inherits a house in an increasingly rich and trendy London neighborhood. Carl needs cash, however, so he rents the upstairs room and kitchen to the first person he interviews, Dermot McKinnon. That was colossal mistake number one. Mistake number two was keeping his father’s bizarre collection of homeopathic “cures” that he found in the medicine cabinet, including a stash of controversial diet pills. Mistake number three was selling fifty of those diet pills to a friend, who is then found dead.

Dermot seizes a nefarious opportunity and begins to blackmail Carl, refusing to pay rent, and creepily invading Carl’s space. Ingeniously weaving together two storylines that finally merge in one shocking turn, Ruth Rendell describes one man’s spiral into darkness—and murder—as he falls victim to a diabolical foe he cannot escape.

My take

Ruth Rendell died earlier this year at the age of 85. So this stand-alone is the very last of her books, and of course as a long time avid reader of her books (there have been 60 of them in the last 50 years) I had to read it.

While I wouldn't rate it in her best 10, it still demonstrates what a remarkable story teller she was, and how she was able to get into the mind of her principal characters.

There is no doubt here who the "murderer" is, even though Carl caused his friend's death unwittingly. But it preys constantly on his mind and he becomes unable to work, to eat, to sleep. And Rendell asks the reader whether we would react in the same way. Or would we get it over and done with, and front up to the police with an admission that we were the source of the tablets that in all probability killed Stacey. Carl chooses not to and thus becomes the victim of Dermot, his upstairs tenant, who blackmails him by refusing to pay any rent. With no income, and unable to work, Carl sinks lower and lower, to the point where his girlfriend leaves him, and Dermot preys on his mind.

The story just misses out on creating enough tension although there is a second murder, and also another attempted one.

There is a second story thread running alongside the first: Lizzie Milsom, a friend of the dead girl Stacey, who moves into her flat, wears her clothes, and finally gets kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity. When Lizzie's father Tom gets a free bus card when he turns 60, he takes up a new hobby: travelling on buses. After being beaten up at one bus stop, he then has a nasty experience when a passenger gets off a bus, leaving his rucksack behind.

So a good if not brilliant final outing for an author who has left an indelible mark on British crime fiction.
For those who do not know, Ruth Rendell was the creator of Inspector Wexford, and also wrote under the pseudonym of Barbara Vine.

My rating: 4.4

I've also read
FROM DOON WITH DEATH - Wexford #1
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH- Wexford #2
4.6, THE BEST MAN TO DIE - Wexford #4
4.3, A SLEEPING LIFE, Ruth Rendell  - Wexford #10 
4.7, PUT ON BY CUNNING - Wexford #11
4.6, THE VAULT- Wexford #23 
4.5, NO MAN'S NIGHTINGALE- Wexford #24   
 
Stand-alones 
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
4.5, A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
4.5, THE SAINT ZITA SOCIETY
4.6, THE MASTER OF THE MOOR

Barbara Vine
THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT
4.8, A DARK ADAPTED EYE

Review: A SPOT OF FOLLY, Ruth Rendell

• this edition published by Profile Books 2017
• ISBN 978-1788160148
• source: my local library
• 210 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

Ten and a Quarter New Tales of Murder and Mayhem.

Previously uncollected and unpublished: new short stories from a master of psychological suspense. Introduction from Sophie Hannah.

New and uncollected tales of murder, mischief, magic and madness.

Ruth Rendell was an acknowledged master of psychological suspense: these are ten (and a quarter) of her most chillingly compelling short stories, collected here together for the first time.
In these tales, a businessman boasts about cheating on his wife, only to find the tables turned. A beautiful country rectory reverberates to the echo of a historical murder. A compulsive liar acts on impulse, only to be lead inexorably to disaster. And a wealthy man finds there is more to his wife's kidnapping than meets the eye.

Atmospheric, gripping and never predictable, this is Ruth Rendell at her inimitable best.
The stories are: Never Sleep in a Bed Facing a Mirror; A Spot of Folly; The Price of Joy; The Irony of Hate; Digby's Wives; The Haunting of Shawley Rectory; A Drop Too Much; The Thief; The Long Corridor of Time; In the Time of his Prosperity; and Trebuchet.

My Take

No two of Ruth Rendell's short stories are ever alike, although in some cases one or two became the basis of a later novel.

She was obviously fascinated by links with history and elements of the supernatural. Each of the short stories is polished and they are mostly under 20 pages. There are 3 ghost stories in this collection, although one is only a matter of lines long. Most have an unexpected twist.

Highly recommended.
The introduction by Sophie Hannah raises some interesting points.

My rating: 4.6

I've also read
FROM DOON WITH DEATH - Wexford #1
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH- Wexford #2
4.6, THE BEST MAN TO DIE - Wexford #4
4.3, A SLEEPING LIFE, Ruth Rendell  - Wexford #10 
4.7, PUT ON BY CUNNING - Wexford #11
4.6, THE VAULT- Wexford #23 
4.5, NO MAN'S NIGHTINGALE- Wexford #24   
Stand-alones 
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
4.5, A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
4.5, THE SAINT ZITA SOCIETY
4.6, THE MASTER OF THE MOOR
4.4, DARK CORNERS

Ruth Rendell Slide Show

Pieces of me: Ruth Rendell, author is a short slide show on the UK Guardian which will reveal things about her you didn't know.

She also happens to be one of my favourite authors and you can track her through my blog at Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine and here.

New books to come
The Birthday Present (Barbara Vine).
Portobello (Ruth Rendell).
and I haven't yet read The Thief (2006) (Ruth Rendell novella/quick read).

Coincidentally, this also just happens to be my 300th blog posting.

Don't Always Hit the Mark #2

This is a series that I began last week.
The general idea behind it is that even the best authors, or your favourite ones, don't always achieve the same rating with the reader.
There are of course many reasons for this - some of them lie with the author, some with the reader. You probably already recognise the factors that affect how you feel about a book - sometimes it is the plot, sometimes plot lines that don't quite come off, sometimes unconvincing characters, but sometimes too it is your mood when you are reading, factors in your life that the author could not have predicted.

Any way each of these posts will deal with an author or two, and the titles stored on my database as well as those I have reviewed on my blog. Last week I looked at Agatha Christie.

This week I am looking at Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine.

Here are my records in rating order:

Ruth Rendell

1. NOT IN THE FLESH (2007) my rating 4.8
2. END IN TEARS (2005) my rating 4.8
3. THE FEVER TREE AND OTHER STORIES (1982) my rating 4.8
4. THE WATER'S LOVELY (2006) my rating 4.7
5. COLLECTED STORIES (2007) my rating 4.6
6. FROM DOON WITH DEATH (1964) my rating 4.2
7. PORTOBELLO (2008) my rating 4.2

My average rating of Ruth Rendell titles is 4.5 which makes them a safe pick for me.

Barbara Vine:

1. THE MINOTAUR (2005) my rating 5
2. THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT (2008) my rating 4.1
3. NO NIGHT IS TOO LONG (1994) my rating 4.0
   

You can see that the Barbara Vine titles, admittedly there are only 3 of them on my list, although I've actually read many more, don't fare so well.

My general benchmarks are

5.0 Excellent
4.0 Very Good
3.0 Average
2.0 Poor
1.0 Did Not Like
0 Did Not Finish

Reviews on my blog:

Rendell, Ruth:

• FROM DOON WITH DEATH
• PORTOBELLO

Vine, Barbara: THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT

All my posts relating to Ruth Rendell and

Review: COLLECTED STORIES, Ruth Rendell

A review previously published elsewhere

Hutchinson, Random House Australia

Ruth Rendell's COLLECTED STORIES is an omnibus of three previously published collections: THE FALLEN CURTAIN AND OTHER STORIES (1976), MEANS OF EVIL AND OTHER STORIES (1979), and THE FEVER TREE AND OTHER STORIES (1982). Some of the stories have appeared individually and in other collections, all over twenty-five years ago. Many of them were first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

Few authors specialise in the short story today, and each of these twenty-seven stories convinces the reader what a consummate writer of this genre Rendell is. She explores a range of topics: the boy abducted by a Man, the false evidence that convicts a man of murder, a boy's distillation of a vegetable poison, death by knitting needle, the serial killer charged with a murder he didn't commit, the killer-for-hire foiled by his love of dogs, the woman who tried suicide once too often, and more. Most of the stories stand alone, but the five in MEANS OF EVIL AND OTHER STORIES all feature Reg Wexford and Mike Burden, Rendell's central characters from the much acclaimed Wexford series.

This kind of book doesn't have to be read in one sitting. In fact the stories probably work best if the reader treats it as a book to dip into, or to read on the bus to and from work. What they will do is whet the reader's appetite for more.

And there is no lack of further collections to look for: Rendell has published no less than fifteen collections of short stories, twenty books in the Inspector Wexford series, twenty eight stand alone novels, eight omnibuses, and contributed to another twelve anthologies. She has written another fifteen novels under the pen-name of Barbara Vine. Ruth Rendell, now Baroness Rendell of Babergh CBE, is without doubt Britain's "Queen of Crime". She has been the recipient of three Edgars, four Gold Daggers, and is a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.

April 2007 review originally published on Murder and Mayhem

Crime Fiction Alphabet: END IN TEARS, Ruth Rendell

My contribution to Crime Fiction Alphabet for the letter E.

I read this back in 2006, so this is just a mini-review. I need to say though that Ruth Rendell is one of my favourite authors.

In the early hours of the morning George Marshalson is waiting anxiously for his young daughter to come home. His discovery of her body at dawn not far from the house is the beginning of a new case for Reg Wexford and the Kingsmarkham CID team. Neither Reg nor his assistant Mike Burden are getting any younger and both are a bit old-fashioned in their attitudes and their policing methods. In this, the 20th book in the Wexford series that began in 1964, award winning author Ruth Rendell introduces the new face of policing in Britain in the persons of the latest additions to the team, Bal and Hannah. And again Rendell gives this book a contemporary setting by weaving into it a theme that has been of world-wide community concern. The Wexford family interest continues too when daughter Sylvia becomes pregnant by her ex-husband.

My rating: 4.8

Publisher's Blurb

At first there was no reason to link the killings. The first one, months earlier, seemed totally random: a lump of concrete pushed off an overpass onto a passing car. By contrast, the gruesome bludgeoning death of Amber Marshalson, returning home late from a night out clubbing with friends, was obviously calculated. The killer had been seen waiting for the girl in a nearby wood. But when Chief Inspector Wexford discovers that Amber had been the driver right behind the crushed car - and that she'd been driving a silver Honda, while the car in front of her was a gray Honda - he knows that someone wanted the teenager dead badly enough to kill twice to get the job done. And as it turns out, this murderer's plans are only just getting underway. Can Wexford unravel the complex knots that connect these murders in time to save future victims? Or is he, as he begins to fear, losing his touch and fast becoming a relic of another time?

Long beloved by readers for her deft weaving of wonderfully meticulous characterization, dark humor, and trenchant social commentary into gripping and fast-paced plots, Ruth Rendell is in top form with End in Tears. Taking off from the first page with back-to-back murders and ending with one of Wexford's own officers in mortal danger, End in Tears touches on issues of class, race, parenthood, aging, and gender roles as it brings the traditional British whodunit into the twenty-first century.

Forgotten Book: ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN, Ruth Rendell

As I said last week, when I featured Ngaio Marsh's COLOUR SCHEME, for my contribution this year to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books I am going to focus on the books I read 20 years ago in 1992. By then my reading diet was almost exclusively crime fiction.

In January and February of 1992 I went through a Ruth Rendell phase.
My records show that I read 12 Ruth Rendell titles, in no particular order really, starting with ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN, a standalone published in 1971.

Of course, now, 20 years on, I don't remember much about the book at all.
According to Amazon the story outline is

Two things interest Stanley Manning: crossword puzzles, and the substantial sum his wife Vera stands to inherit when his mother-in-law dies.

Otherwise, life at 61 Lanchester Road is a living hell. For Mrs. Kinaway lives with them now—and she will stop at nothing to tear their marriage apart. One afternoon, Stanley sets aside his crossword puzzles and changes all their lives forever... 

In One Across, Two Down, master crime writer Ruth Rendell describes a man whose strained sanity and stained reputation transform him from a witless loser into a killer afraid of his own shadow.

According to my records though, this marks my "discovery" of Rendell, and I have been a fan of her writing ever since.

Forgotten Book: FROM DOON WITH DEATH, Ruth Rendell

This week's contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books.

Last week Ruth Rendell revealed that the final Inspector Wexford novel (probably) will be published later this year. It will be the 22nd in the series that began 45 years ago with the publication of FROM DOON WITH DEATH (1964).

So I thought my Forgotten Book post this week would pay tribute to this great author, without doubt one of my favourites, and this great series. This was her first published novel.

Blurb from Amazon
There is nothing extraordinary about Margaret Parsons, a timid housewife in the quiet town of Kingsmarkham, a woman devoted to her garden, her kitchen, her husband. Except that Margaret Parsons is dead, brutally strangled, her body abandoned in the nearby woods.

Who would kill someone with nothing to hide? Inspector Wexford, the formidable chief of police, feels baffled -- until he discovers Margaret's dark secret: a trove of rare books, each volume breathlessly inscribed by a passionate lover identified only as Doon. As Wexford delves deeper into both Mrs. Parsons

FROM DOON WITH DEATH introduced Chief Inspector Reg Wexford, his offsider Inspector Mike Burden, and the town of Kingsmarkham. Reg in particular didn't seem all that young in the first novel, and he certainly hasn't aged 45 years since then.
But what Rendell essentially did was introduce an enduring set of characters that included Reg's forceful wife Dora and their daughters Sylvia and Sheila. And suddenly we travelled along life's journey with the Wexford family, and crime fiction took on new dimensions.

This interest in the sleuth's family was something that Simenon did very well, with the rather enigmatic Madame Maigret, but Rendell has done it oh so well.

For me reading a new Wexford novel is always like visiting with old friends, and I for one will be sad that the series is coming to an end.

For the last 20 years, since 1988, George Baker has played Reg Wexford in various TV adaptations, and at 78, only just a year younger than Rendell herself, there is really little likelihood he will make any more.

A little known fact is that George himself wrote the screen adaptation for FROM DOON WITH DEATH.

If you'd like to follow some of my other posts about Ruth Rendell, click on this link.

The Wexford series, courtesy Fantastic Fiction

1. From Doon with Death (1964)
2. Sins of the Fathers (1967)
aka A New Lease of Death
3. Wolf to the Slaughter (1967)
4. The Best Man to Die (1969)
5. A Guilty Thing Surprised (1970)
6. No More Dying Then (1971)
7. Murder Being Once Done (1972)
8. Some Lie and Some Die (1973)
9. Shake Hands Forever (1975)
10. A Sleeping Life (1978)
11. Put On By Cunning (1981)
aka Death Notes
12. The Speaker of Mandarin (1983)
13. An Unkindness of Ravens (1985)
14. The Veiled One (1988)
15. Kissing the Gunners Daughter (1992)
16. Simisola (1994)
17. Road Rage (1997)
18. Harm Done (1998)
19. The Babes in the Wood (2002)
20. End in Tears (2005)
21. Not in the Flesh (2007)
22. The Monster in the Box (2009)
Means of Evil: And Other Stories (1979)
Put on by Cunning / Unkindness of Ravens (omnibus) (2007)

Forgotten Book: THE SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH, Ruth Rendell

This contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books is from my records for 1993.
I was an admirer of Ruth Rendell and an avid reader of her books from the 1970s.

THE SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH is an early standalone novel published in 1968.

Publisher's Blurb

Susan Townsend was the only resident with no interest in the affair going on next door in Orchard Drive, or in the neighbourhood gossip about it. Yet it was Susan who found the bodies of the lovers locked in death. And it was Susan whose own life would be imperilled by a monstrous crime.

From the inside flap of the dustjacket
Louise North doesn't care what the neighbors think. She lets her lover leave his car just outside her house in broad daylight, telling everyone a cockamamie story about him being a central heating salesman. Still, it's a shock when she's found shot dead, covered by the equally dead body of the "salesman." Now Susan Townsend -- the Norths' next-door neighbor, who discovers the bodies -- must help Louise's husband, Bob, get back on his feet. But is she helping a neighbor . . . or a murderer?

The story was filmed for TV in the Ruth Rendell Mysteries 1987

Director:Jim Goddard

Writers:Ruth Rendell (novel), John Harvey (adaptation)

Stars:Amanda Redman, Sarah Parks and Adam Welsh

Original Air Date: 8 March 1996 

Film blurb: A lonely divorcée becomes involved with a neighbor whose wife and her lover carried out a suicide pact. Unaware that Bob and Magdalene are the adulterers who murdered their spouses and faked the suicide pact, Susan offers her neighbour comfort, which he pretends to accept in order to find out how much she knows. However, whilst her son is on holiday with his father she does some sleuthing which links him with Magdalene. He comes after her and she is rescued by an unlikely saviour.

Forgotten Book: GALLOWGLASS, Barbara Vine

This week's Friday's Forgotten book for the meme hosted by Patti Abbott on Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books is one that I read in 1993.

Publisher's blurb:

In the middle ages a gallowglass was the personal guard of the Celtic chief: the food taster, the right hand man, the expendable one who would die for his leader. Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine for the fourth time, here presents a tale of kidnapping, obsession, and loyalty told by two men thrust into the part of modern gallowglass. The Princess, a former fashion model with a penchant for marrying older, rich men, is the target once again of the man who had been her jailer five years.

We haven't seen a Barbara Vine title since 2008. The first in these popular British stand-alones was published in 1986. They have tended to be psychological thrillers with what Rendell/Vine herself calls "deeper characters". See full list at Fantastic Fiction.

In an interesting "letter to the public" Ruth Rendell explained the fact that she writes under both names as the logical extension of having been called Ruth by her father and Barbara as her mother:

Growing up with two names doesn't make you into two people. It does give you two aspects of personality, and Ruth and Barbara are two aspects of me. Ruth is tougher, colder, more analytical, possibly more aggressive. Ruth has written all the novels, created Chief Inspector Wexford. Ruth is the professional writer. Barbara is more feminine. It is Barbara who sews. If Barbara writes it is letters that she writes. see more

Reviews on this blog

Vine, Barbara:
THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT

Rendell, Ruth:
FROM DOON WITH DEATH
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH

Crime Fiction Alphabet: R is for Ruth and Reginald

Among my favourite British authors are Reginald Hill and Ruth Rendell, so what I've decided to do for the letter inthe Crime Fiction Alphabet is to point to some of the reviews on my blog of their books.

Between them they have made an incredible contribution to the genre.

They have both written under pseudonyms too: Reginald Hill as Dick Morland, Patrick Ruell, Charles Underhill and Ruth Rendell as Barbara Vine.

Hill, Reginald:
A CURE FOR ALL DISEASES
ASKING FOR THE MOON
4.5, CHILD'S PLAY
DEATH OF A DORMOUSE
MIDNIGHT FUGUE
THE SPY'S WIFE
THE ROAR OF THE BUTTERFLIES
THERE ARE NO GHOSTS IN THE SOVIET UNION
4.8, THE WOODCUTTER (2009)

Rendell, Ruth:
FROM DOON WITH DEATH
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX (2009)
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH

There are a couple of Ruth Rendell recent stand alones that I keep thinking I must make time to read:
Tigerlily's Orchids (2010)
The Vault (2011)

Review: MASTER OF THE MOOR, Ruth Rendell - audio book

• this edition available from Audible, narrated by Michael Bryant
• Unabridged
• Length: 7 hours 6 mins
• originally published 1982 

Synopsis (Audible)

The bleak expanse of Vangmoor was a dark, forbidding place. One victim had been found there, blonde, her face disfigured, her head shorn close to the scalp - killed without motive or mercy.

Then a second woman went missing on the moor, and a sense of utter dread gripped the fifty local men who searched for her. Someone watched them in that treacherous place. Was he a killer? Or was he merely angry that a killer had usurped him? For he, and only he, was the Master of the Moor.

From Wikipedia

Columnist Stephen Walby, known as the Voice of Vangmoor, often goes on long walks through the countryside that lies outside his window. However, events take on a sinister turn when he stumbles across the body of a young woman, whose face has been badly disfigured and her hair shaven.

After another corpse surfaces he finds himself under suspicion from the local police, and when he then goes on to discover that his wife has been having an affair, tragedy ensues..

My Take

This is a Ruth Rendell stand-alone published in 1982, before she began publishing this style of book under the pseudonym of Barbara Vine.

Like his grandfather before him, Stephen Walby has an obsession with Vangmoor. It came as a surprise to me that Stephen is a relatively young man, only in his early twenties. I thought Rendell made him seem much older than he is. He also seems to have the knack of turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time, eventually giving the police no alternative to taking him in for questioning, regarding him as a "person of interest" in the Vangmoor murder cases.

The story takes a savage twist about half way through, when Stephen reacts violently upon finding out that his wife has been having an affair. Is Stephen Walby a dormant psychotic? His comfortable world is constantly under challenge. The strings that anchor Stephen to reality are snapped when a childhood friend reappears.

And just when the reader thinks they have it all worked out, the book takes another twist, one that you could not have predicted, as the Master of the Moor claims his final victim.

Another of the characteristics of these early Rendell stand-alones, by comparison with the Wexford series, is that they are relatively short books. According to Amazon, it is only 218 pages long. For example THE VAULT, one of the later Wexfords, is more than 60 pages longer, as are many of her later books.

My rating: 4.6

I have reviewed the following Barbara Vine novels
THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT
4.8, A DARK ADAPTED EYE

And these by Ruth Rendell
FROM DOON WITH DEATH
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH
4.6, THE VAULT
4.6, THE BEST MAN TO DIE
4.5, A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
4.5, THE SAINT ZITA SOCIETY  

Review: THE MONSTER IN THE BOX, Ruth Rendell

Published by Hutchinson 2009
ISBN 978-0-091-93149-0
279 pages
#22 in the Wexford series

All of his working life Reg Wexford has thought he has known of an unconvicted killer. When he was a young police officer, a young woman, Elsie Carroll, was found murdered. Her husband George, who always proclaimed his innocence, was charged with her murder, brought to trial, convicted, and then freed on appeal because of the judge's misdirection of the jury. Wexford's bosses were convinced they had got the right person, but Reg Wexford thought he knew better. He was convinced that a smug little man, Eric Targo, was the real murderer. Reg just didn't know why. When another woman was found murdered, again Reg was convinced Targo had something to do with it, he just couldn't work out the connection.

This was the beginning of a strange relationship between Wexford and Targo. Wexford becomes convinced that Targo is stalking him. And then Targo disappears from Reg's life. Now Targo has come back.

THE MONSTER IN THE BOX has an interesting structure. Much of it consists of a conversation between Wexford and his deputy Burden, in which Wexford describes all of the times Targo has apppeared his life and why he became convinced that Targo was stalking him. The author uses the novel as a vehicle to reveal to the reader a lot of personal detail from Wexford's life: his early days in the police force, his courtship of his wife Dora. The time frame must go back nearly four decades, and times when Burden has been part of that timeline are pinpointed. As the timeline gets closer to the present, it is clear there will be a more modern incident involving Targo. Wexford is convinced he is a psychopathic killer.

I found the time layers of this novel a little confusing.
The following passage Wexford and Burden getting together for the first time for Wexford to relate his story:
They chose the Olive and Dove, the little room called the snug which over the years they had made almost their own. Of course others used it, as the yellow-stained ceiling and lingering smell of a million cigarettes bore witness. In a few years' time a smoking ban would come in, the walls and ceiling be redecorated, new curtains hung at the clouded wondows and ashtrays banished, but in the late nineties there was no hint of that. Outside the window it was mostly young people who could be seen sitting at the tables under coloured umbrellas on the Olive's veranda, for the evening was as mild as the day had been, while their elders crowded into the saloon bar. All those people or those who succeeded them would ten years in the future be obliged to huddle on that verandah, rain or shine, snow or fog, if they wanted ot smoke.
I re-read this passage several times to make sure I had got the time frame correct. I've put the clue I picked up in bold.

In fact, Rendell had me reading a few passages in THE MONSTER IN THE BOX several times. That might get the thumbs down from some readers.

Ruth Rendell announced last year that THE MONSTER IN THE BOX is her last Wexford novel. If it is, then I am disappointed, because even though it does survey all of Reg's life, it doesn't feel to me he has gone out on the high that I wanted.

Mind you, it is still a good read. My rating 4.7

You might like to check this post: Forgotten book: FROM DOON WITH DEATH.

Other reviews to check:

• Petrona:
  "the strength of this author’s writing is such that it does not matter if some elements of the novel are a bit predictable, because it is so full of rich (but lightly presented) detail, with so many very astute observations about the changes in society over the past 50 years during which this series has been written, that one is simply held to the pages, until the last one is turned."
• Random Jottings:
  "this book ... has an elegiac quality to it"

Other titles reviewed on this blog

• FROM DOON WITH DEATH
• PORTOBELLO

Want the full list of Ruth Rendell novels?: check Fantastic Fiction.
Don't forget she writes as Barbara Vine too.

Review, PORTOBELLO, Ruth Rendell

Hutchinson 2008, ISBN 978-0-09-192585-7, 278 pages

Anybody who has visited London is familiar with the Portobello Road and its markets. Some of the families, rich and poor, who live in the streets off Portobello Road have lived in the district for generations. Eugene Wren's very successful art gallery of fine arts in upmarket Kensington Church Street for example, is the successor to the one his father had in a glossy arcade quite a long way up the road. Gene, seemingly a confirmed bachelor now in his 50s lives in the more fashionable Chepstow Villas.

In contrast is the Gibson family, once market stall holders, now most of the family either lives on the dole or on the products of breaking and entering. Lance, unemployed, lives with his step-uncle Gib,an elder of the Church of the Children of Zebulun. His girlfriend has thrown him out, and his parents won't let him in. Lance needs instant money to repair his girlfriend's teeth after he knocks her front tooth out, and burglary provides afeasible option.

When Joel Roseman has a heart attack in the street he becomes a patient of Eugene's lady friend Ella, who is a GP in a nearby practice. Ella soon realises that Joel's problems are as much psychological as they are physical, and outside her capabilities. And in an illustration that the problems right on our own doorstep often go unrecognised by our nearest and dearest, Eugene has an addiction he doesn't dare tell Ella about.

Ruth Rendell has taken the lives of three principal characters and the circles within which they move, and played with the concept of degrees of separation, forging connections between them that we would never have expected.

In a sense, although several crimes take place in the novel, this isn't really a crime fiction novel. For me, it is more like those novels that Rendell has written under her Barbara Vine pseudonym. I've felt that with the last couple of Rendell stand alones, most recently in in THE WATER'S LOVELY. It is almost as if she has changed her mind about what goes under what name. As others have commented, this isn't Rendell at her best. She struggles with a couple of plots to make them interesting, and I found the one involving Eugene Wren particularly tedious. However she still writes well, but the crime fiction strands are really not tensioned enough.

My rating: 4.2

For a full list of Rendell novels see Fantastic Fiction

Forgotten Book: THE HOUSE OF STAIRS, Barbara Vine

For many of my contributions this year to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books  I am focussing on the books I read 20 years ago in 1992. By then my reading diet was almost exclusively crime fiction.

In early 1992 I "discovered" Ruth Rendell (see my Forgotten Books post earlier this year) and by mid year  I had read about 15 titles. In mid year I discovered her other persona, Barbara Vine. I do remember that it wasn't generally understood that they were one and the same person. I remember the excitement of that discovery.

I began with THE HOUSE OF STAIRS which had been published in 1988.

Synopsis from Fantastic Fiction
I hope the synopsis does not reveal too much of the plot for you.

Writing as Barbara Vine ( A Dark-Adapted Eye ), Ruth Rendell adds dark, psychological elements to her novels that elude easy categorization as straightforward mysteries.

Early on here, she establishes a knot of unknowns: Who is the sad, reflective narrator and what illness might she have? What hold does the tall dark woman called Bell have on her, and what happened at the carefully described House of Stairs in London that sent Bell to prison? The answers are revealed as gradually as an intricate knot is untied.

The narrator is middle-aged novelist Elizabeth Vetch who, since she learned of her grim heritage at age 14, has lived under the threat of inheriting fatal Huntington's chorea, which she refers to as ''the terror and the bore.'' Years before, in the late '60s and early '70s, she and Bell and a roster of other beautifully realized people lived in the House of Stairs, owned by Elizabeth's recently widowed, newly Bohemian aunt Cosette.

The tale begins when Elizabeth sights Bell in the street and, being as drawn to the woman as she had been before, feels compelled to understand her own reawakened emotion as well as the events that accompanied their parting and caused both Cosette and Elizabeth untold pain.

With specific references to its underpinning of Henry James's The Wings of A Dove , Rendell's story is dark and portentous, overly so in the early part, where ominous and significant references drag the action. But soon Elizabeth, with her uncertain future and brave effort to pin down her painful past, takes over. She is, in the end, along with the considerably satisfying mystery connecting those who lived at the House of Stairs, profoundly memorable.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I haven't always understood why Rendell created her Barbara Vine alter-ego and have thought it was something to do with getting more published. The Wexford novels were always Rendell, but sometimes Rendell titles, particularly the more recent stand-alones can also be dark and psychological. Anyway between both sets of books there is some fantastic reading to be had.

Review: THE BLOOD DOCTOR, Barbara Vine

• 
  this large print edition published by Chivers Press 2002
  
• ISBN 0-7540-1786-9
• 507 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

Barbara Vine's new novel is about blood - blood in its metaphysical sense as the conductor of an inherited title and blood in its physical sense as the transmitter of disease.

The current Lord Nanther, experiencing the reform of the House of Lords, embarks on a biography of his great-grandfather, the first Lord Nanther, favoured physician to Queen Victoria, expert on blood diseases and particularly the royal disease of haemophilia. What he uncovers begins to horrify him as he realizes that Nanther died a guilty man - carrying a horrific secret to the grave.

The Blood Doctor weaves effortlessly between past and present, public life and private life. The result is a superbly satisfying novel about ambition, obsession and bad blood.

My Take

As she often did, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) took circumstances that were prompted by her position and work in the House of Lords as a springboard for this stand-lone novel. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1996 Birthday Honours and a life peer as Baroness Rendell of Babergh, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk, on 24 October 1997. She sat in the House of Lords for the Labour Party. In 1998 Rendell was named in a list of the party's biggest private financial donors. 

The reform of the House of Lords took place in 1998 just after she had been made a life peer so what is happening to Martin Nanther is essentially what was happening there, although of course she was a life peer, not an hereditary one like Nanther.

By the time of the reform, the House of Lords was being overwhelmed by an excess of hereditary peers and had become unsustainable and unwieldy in its present form. The idea that the blood of the hereditary peers was somehow "special" had lost favour. They wouldn't lose their titles or their estates, simply their right to sit in the House of Lords.

Martin Nanther has begun amassing memorabilia about his great grandfather Henry Nanther, given a hereditary peerage at the end of the nineteenth century by Queen Victoria for his work on diseases of the blood, particularly of haemophilia of which she was a carrier (which she refused to recognise), and which her own sons and grandsons were afflicted by.

Martin is transfixed by a letter written by one of his great-aunts in which she says Henry Nanther had done terrible things. Martin aims to eventually write a biography of his great-grandfather, and his research takes him to meet cousins and distant relatives whom he has never met, and to become aware of the presence of "tainted" blood in his own family.

Running alongside the main plot is the sub-plot of Martin and his second wife Jude attempting to have a baby, and the revelation that it is a genetic problem that is causing her frequent miscarriages.

This wasn't a book I could read quickly. There was quite a lot of history to absorb, and though I read it in large print, or perhaps because I did, it was also quite weighty.

However, a fascinating read.

My rating:  4.7

I've also read 

Vine, Barbara:
THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT
4.8, A DARK ADAPTED EYE
4.3, THE CHILD'S CHILD

Rendell, Ruth:
FROM DOON WITH DEATH - Wexford #1
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH- Wexford #2
4.6, THE BEST MAN TO DIE - Wexford #4
4.3, A SLEEPING LIFE, Ruth Rendell  - Wexford #10 
4.7, PUT ON BY CUNNING - Wexford #11
4.6, THE VAULT- Wexford #23
4.5, NO MAN'S NIGHTINGALE- Wexford #24
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
4.5, A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
4.5, THE SAINT ZITA SOCIETY
4.6, THE MASTER OF THE MOOR
4.4, DARK CORNERS
4.6, A SPOT OF FOLLY