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Slapende honden (2009)

One of Ruth Rendell's best! I always enjoy her work but sometimes find the endings contrived. This time, the conclusion made perfect sense from the way this splendid author foreshadowed things.Two things I really like about Rendell's Wexford novels:1. She lets many of the minor characters occasi...

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The Monster in the Box (2009)

Καθαρή,εμπλουτισμένη πλοκή που δεν κουράζει με πολλά στοιχεία και γεγονότα.Η πρώτη προσωπική είσοδος στον κόσμο του επιθεωρητή Γουέξφορντ στέφθηκε με επιτυχία·σίγουρα θα ψάξω και τα υπόλοιπα της σειράς.Η Ρέντελ γράφει με έναν αβίαστο,φυσικό τρόπο που μοιάζει σχεδόν σα να μη προσπαθεί καθόλου.Σα ...

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Tigerlily's Orchids (2010)

I'm not a soap opera watcher, and I've never before read a book that seemed to be a soap opera. This is that soap opera book.Rendell does an excellent job of storytelling, but this is really just a story about the lives of people living in a community and how their actions effect one another. Y...

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Speaker of Mandarin (1984)

Shoot! This was a disappointment. I only bought it because I recognized the author as the woman who wrote A Dark-Adapted Eye under the name of Barbara Vine. Speaker of Mandarin is billed as "A New Inspector Wexford Mystery," but I am not a knowledgeable mystery/detective fiction fan and I fini...

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The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (2006)

Having never read a Barbara Vine before, but being recommended this book specifically and by someone whose judgement I value, I looked forward to starting it and I wasn't disappointed. The Chimney Sweeper's Boy is an extraordinary, character driven book that tells the story of the Candless family...

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Master of the Moor (1982)

A Problem With GenreAs crime fiction goes, The Master of The Moor by Ruth Rendell is perhaps one of the more subtle examples. The action is set in a moorland community, presumably somewhere like North Yorkshire, though the book’s place names are pure invention and geography is not defined. There ...

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A Judgement in Stone (2000)

Ruth Rendell, who died earlier this year, is widely regarded as one of the finest crime novelists of recent times. I understand that her final book, which she completed before her death, will be published this autumn. I have read a fair amount of her work and enjoyed most of it. I was slightly ...

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Anna's Book (1994)

7/14/15: I've listened to this several times over the past few months on audio, superbly performed by Harriet Walter. As many times as I've read the book, I'm still "hearing" new sentences, it seems (I've listened to several other Vines as well during this time, and the same is true of them). Iro...

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Some Lie and Some Die (1973)

Read by................ Nigel AnthonyTotal Runtime......... 6 Hours 10 MinsDescription: During the brilliantly depicted rock festival in the grounds of Sundays House, the bands play, the weather is fine, and a good time is had by all except one or two disgruntled locals. Oh, and the sometime...

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The Blood Doctor (2002)

The Blood Doctor is an absolutely fine mystery, but it's not her best work. That distinction goes to (imho) A Dark-Adapted Eye, probably one of the best mysteries ever written and certainly the favorite of my British Mystery collection. I enjoy settling down with a novel by this author and watchi...

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The Keys to the Street (1997)

Good stuff, complicated stuff. At the center of this multi-character story is Mary Jago. Mary is a young woman who is having some difficulty getting an abusive boyfriend out of her life entirely. She works at and partly owns an odd tourist attraction: The Irene Adler Museum. Adler was a fictional...

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Piranha to Scurfy: And Other Stories (2002)

I don't know why short story collections aren't more popular. Small mouthfuls of story are ideal for the times you don't want to commit to some enormous tome. There may be as many words as in a novel, but the frequent changes and pace and characters are refreshing.Some of the first stories have u...

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The Crocodile Bird (1994)

"Shrove House: the palace, the house of pictures and secrets, dolls and keys, books and shadows.""The Crocodile Bird" tem uma introdução bastante misteriosa. Eve e Liza são, respectivamente, mãe e filha. Longe da sociedade, vivem isoladas por opção própria, como residentes da Casa de Shrove, uma ...

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The Fallen Curtain (2001)

This is my first Real experience with Ruth Rendell, and while I haven't read anything of hers, I've heard quite a bit. This is basically another review-in-progress and therefore I Will post short reviews of each story as I read Them, starting, of course, at the very beginning. The Fallen Curtain...

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A Fatal Inversion (1992)

In A Fatal Inversion, by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine, we meet a group of young people in Suffolk in the very hot summer of 1976. There is Adam, who has inherited a large home from his great-uncle; Zosie, a waif of a woman for whom Adam and his home is a refuge from the world; Rufus, the...

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Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (2003)

It would be inaccurate for the reader to classify this book as a mystery, because one can observe the actions of the characters throughout. The proper genre would most aptly be one of suspense. The mystery to me is how Ruth Rendell, unarguably The Queen of the Crime Novel, is able to produce such...

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Thirteen Steps Down (2005)

I've read a few Rendell novels before and I couldn't put them down. This one was like a slow lifting of the curtain until finally there are a mass of actors in view and moving about. No question that the acting is interesting and eventually the many individuals began to differentiate themselves b...

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The Babes in the Wood (2004)

Wexford is getting to be an old fogey, needing help from his younger associates to decipher the slang of teenage witnesses. Two teens and their sitter go missing just before Christmas one very rainy winter in Kingsmarkham. Few clues arise easily, the case drags on, Wexford's divorced daughter has...

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A Sleeping Life (2000)

Set in the late 1980s, this Inspector Wexford mystery is one of my favourites, for it shows Ruth Rendell in top form, masterly presenting us with a puzzle and a subject rarely if ever tackled by male crime writers. As is typical of Rendell's Wexford stories, the inspector's home life and work col...

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Wolf to the Slaughter (1987)

I can only give this three stars...The mystery is okay, the interplay of characters, the scattering of clues that an astute reader of mystery should be able to discern, but...It's the writing. I love Ruth Rendell: the stories, characters, settings, but the way she writes often totally confuses me...

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The Lake of Darkness (2001)

Martin Urban, a square 28-year-old accountant, wins 100,000 pounds in the football pools thanks to the picks from his attractively louche friend Tim. Martin plans to use the windfall to play Lord Bountiful, bestowing gifts upon strangers to assist them with housing woes (any housing woes his frie...

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The Secret House of Death (1987)

La ventaja de leer un autor desde sus comienzos es ser testigo en primera fila de cómo va evolucionando su trabajo y mejorando en el oficio de crear historias…comparándola con otros primeras novelas de Rendell –independientes de su personaje estrella, el Inspector Wexford- La casa secreta de la m...

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The Tree of Hands (1986)

Rendell has a particular genius for showing us the gentle, incremental nature of ordinary madness, of the exponential chaos that may come simply from choosing to live with a decision, no matter how absurd, insane or dangerous it may be... or how very insignificant or reversible, for that matter. ...

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A New Lease of Death (2009)

With school starting back this week, and with me preparing for one new class and an overall overload, it took me a bit to get through this one. That isn't to say it's bad, just that I was dozing off mid-chapter and not remembering things I'd read. Going back a few pages and asking "did you read t...

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An Unkindness of Ravens (1986)

This is the 13th Inspector Wexford adventure, who with his side-kick Inspector Mike Burden, solve crimes - usually murders - and keep the citizenry of Sussex, England safe. Although these books are murder mysteries at their core, the author excels - and where she differentiates herself from the "...

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Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (1993)

Another great Inspector Wexford mystery by Ruth Rendell.In this one three people are killed (slaughtered actually) while eating dinner in a great mansion located in a somewhat secluded, private wooded estate. Yes, they are wealthy. One's a famous author; the other two are her husband and daughter...

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End in Tears (2006)

Inspector Reg Wexford is something of a dinosaur, albeit a respected one, in the Kingsbridge Constabulary. As usually happens as people age, he is more and more discomposed by current societal attitudes and mores, while his younger colleagues take them for granted. It's a good thing that Reg has ...

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Grasshopper (2002)

I have never really understood what criteria Ruth Rendell applies when deciding whether to publish a book as a Rendell or a Vine. I could understand if all the Wexford novels were one and everything else another, but this isn't so. I am particularly confused now I have listened to Talking to Stra...

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Brimstone Wedding (2006)

This is one of my very favorite Vines, one I seem drawn to re-read every two or three years - I just re-read it this past January - it "called" to me whilst I was in the midst of reading another book, and I couldn't resist!As with many Vines, there are parallel stories - Jenny is in the thrall of...

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King Solomon's Carpet (1992)

When I first started reading this book I was interested, then I lost my interest but kept reading and then BOOM, I was hooked. A very unusual story with a cast of misfit characters living in an old schoolhouse where the owner Jarvis, rents out rooms to people in need. The school is situated on ...

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From Doon With Death (2007)

Update, May 6, 2015: I am undertaking a Ruth Rendell "key" works project -- the books The Guardian recently noted as such the day of Ruth Rendell's death. From Doon With Death is the first of these . I've just reread this novel again after six years, and while I wouldn't change my rating, I w...

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Simisola (1997)

Rendell is a mystery writer I have long enjoyed and this Inspector Wexford has all the usual trappings of a good detective novel: a missing girl, a couple of dead bodies, a lot of suspects and a lot of missing pieces. Rendell juggles all the many plot threads deftly, keeping you guessing at her ...

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The Veiled One (1989)

On any other day when the body of a woman turns up in the underground car park of the main shopping center in Kingsmarkham Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford would quietly and methodically piece together all the elements of the case, breaking down alibis and ferreting out all the secrets people hav...

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The Killing Doll (1985)

I really enjoyed this book because it was the appropriate amount of weird. The basic premise is that Peter (Pup) sells his soul to the devil and develops an interest in magic. As he grows in his knowledge of the occult, his sister Dolly's fascination with it grows. This is fueled by the fact that...

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The Fever Tree and Other Stories (1994)

"The Fever Tree", more so than any of the other stories in this collection, exemplify Rendell's style. Her murderers are rarely obviously psychopathic killers, nor particularly suave or elegant; they are ordinary people seized by idle curiosity and boredom. "The Fever Tree" examines a couple who,...

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Means of Evil and Other Stories (2010)

This was a very nice collection of short mysteries and a good way to spend part of my weekend. I enjoy Inspector Wexford and his able assistant Burden and the mysteries are well done. The clues were usually there and I figured out whodunit and to some extent whydunit for almost all of them, but...

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A Sight for Sore Eyes (2000)

I was bitterly disappointed with this book after reading so many good reviews and having had a friend recommend it to me. I found the story lack lustre and repetitive, with the same points being repeated continuously, as if Rendell just needed to fill space. The writing to me was childish and imm...

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A Guilty Thing Surprised (1987)

I do love a good Ruth Rendell book, and a strong (Chief) Inspector Wexford tale in particular. And that’s what this is. This, the fifth Wexford story, sees the man himself somewhere between the hard-nosed and frequently rude and bad-tempered upholder of the law, and the thoughtful, cultured, poet...

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The Best Man to Die (1987)

Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be the prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? And Charlie's death was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Now Chief Inspector...

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Going Wrong (1991)

You can read more reviews at my blog, The Armchair Librarian.I read one of Ms. Rendell's earlier works a couple days before. It was called Master of the Moors. I liked her writing abilities but I did not like the story, unfortunately (yes, it was one of those books). However, I had several of her...

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Road Rage (1998)

This one took me longer than usual to read. I am an Inspector Wexford series fan.Fat book for a mystery, and especially for a Ruth Rendell mystery. Most of her Wexford books are fairly slim; this was one around 350+ pages. And the title can be misleading. This is NOT a case of two people arguing,...

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A Demon in My View (2003)

I’m re-reading A DEMON IN MY VIEW, one of the most highly-regarded novel from Ruth Rendell’s ‘early’ period (in this case, 1976 – it was her 14th novel and 6th stand-alone – as we know, she doesn’t have much good to say about the stand-alones that preceded it, but she hit her stride with DEMON an...

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No More Dying Then (1999)

What kind of a person would kidnap two children? That is the question that haunts Wexford when a five-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl disappear from the village of Kingsmarkham. When a child's body turns up at an abandoned country home one search turns into a murder investigation and the...

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To Fear a Painted Devil (1987)

Ruth Rendell's "To Fear a Painted Devil" continues my flirtation with traditional British mystery. While quite dated (the novel feels a bit older than the 49 years since its publication), it is a nice and very fast read. This standalone mystery features a country doctor as the reluctant sleuth, a...

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Talking to Strange Men (1988)

Ruth Rendell novels adapt very well to the audio format and the ones I have listened to have all been enjoyable. Her plots are intricate. Have you seen those pseudo-family trees that "prove" connections between rock stars and royalty, politicians and criminals...? Rendell plots are like that. ...

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Put on by Cunning (1982)

Sir Manuel Carmargue, one of the greatest flautists of his time, was dead. Misadventure. An old man, ankle-deep in snow, he lost his foothold in the dark, slipping into the water to be trapped under a lid of ice. Only a glove remained to point to where he lay, one of its fingers rising out of the...

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Make Death Love Me (1994)

The manager of a tiny branch of the Anglican-Victoria bank, Alan Groombridge, is doomed to a life of domestic boredom and tedious routine, husband to a woman he doesn’t like, the father of two children he never wanted. But Alan has a fantasy: to rob the bank of enough money for one year of freedom.

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Not in the Flesh (2007)

Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury - a human hand.The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped in a purple cotton sheet. The post mortem can not reveal the precise cause of death. The only clue...

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Piranha to Scurfy (2007)

Dressed in models from the Designer Room, they disposed themselves in one of the windows that fronted onto the High Street, one in a hammock m House & Garden, another in an armchair from Beautiful Interiors, holding best-sellers from the book department and pretending to read them. Small crow...

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Shake Hands Forever

Later, when he looked back, he was aware that three twenty-one on the afternoon of Thursday, October second, was the moment when all hope of solving her murder in a straightforward aboveboard way died. But at the time he didn’t know that. He felt only grievance and anger, ...

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The Girl Next Door

She found a seat near the junction of Hamilton Terrace with the St. John’s Wood Road—there were a lot of seats round here—and sank onto it. I am too old for this, she said to herself, this is for a young woman who still has all her physical strength. I should never have gone. Why did I think that...

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The Saint Zita Society

As it happened, Jimmy’s mother’s ring was far too big for her. The woman must have had enormous hands. Thea said it wouldn’t be right for Jimmy to have it made smaller, surely one’s mother’s ring was sacred and shouldn’t be tampered with. ‘We don’t have to have a ring to be engaged.’ It was the s...

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The Speaker of Mandarin

Set in Plantin Printed and bound in Great Britain by Anchor 8rendon Ltd. Tiptree, Essex ISBN 0 09 932810 0 For Don AUTHOR'S NOTE For the transcribing of Chinese words and Chinese proper names into English I have used both the Wade-Giles and the Pinyin systems. While Pinyin is the officially endor...

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Portobello

Always on the lookout for money-making scams, Lance thought it might be a good idea to find one of them and take it as a what-you-callit, a hostage. You could ask a big ransom. Those crazy cat owners would pay anything you cared to name. The difficulty, of course, was to catch a cat. One of them,...

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Wexford 4 - The Best Man To Die

He was a boy of about seven, big for his age, aggressive looking and with food adhering to his face in greasy red and brown streaks. 'Who is it, Dominic?’ came a voice from the sleazy depths of this small and totally inadequate council house. ...

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No Man's Nightingale (2013)

It was in Hampstead, a pretty little converted coach house in the grounds of their daughter Sheila’s home, a ‘mansion’, as the media had it and its kind, on the edge of the Heath. Wexford called this second home ‘a grace-and-favour apartment’ because it was elegant and charming, they paid nothing...

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The Thief

It’s going to be a good day, she thought. The sun was shining and it was less cold. There were pink flowers on the tree in the garden next door and tulips coming out in tubs. She took a cup of tea up to Alex. He would stay in bed to drink it while she took the things out of the washing machine. J...

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The Vault (2011)

But he wouldn’t call them; he’d go there on Monday afternoon. He had paid visits to south London in the past but they had been rare. The Tube and the Northern Line were the obvious transport choice, for he had rejected the idea of driving through the traffic congestion. Miracle Motors was in the ...

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Wexford 14 - The Veiled One

But he would be too late now to see his son put to bed, too late to enjoy (as Wexford, quoting, had once expressed it) ‘. . .those attractions by no means unusual in children of two or three years old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks and a g...

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Asta's Book (2008)

I mean, of course, that she didn’t tell me everything, for no one ever does, but she told me what she chose I should know. After that first confrontation with Asta over the coffee cups, after the second that night in Asta’s room, it was a long while before she said anything to Torben. My mother w...

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The Water's Lovely (2006)

‘I’ve seen it,’ Heather said. ‘I wonder if Ismay knows. She never reads a paper these days. Eva really was lovely, but not like a woman. Like a child of twelve.’ ‘Andrew Campbell-Sedge fancies twelve-year-olds. Haven’t you noticed?’ She would live for ten years, thought Marion. At least ten. Ther...

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Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods

These threaded their way through properties he had visited owned by the National Trust, great houses such as Chatsworth and Blenheim he had always wanted to see but never had the time for and a stretch of Scottish moorland where a distant cousin, long-dead, had been shot in the leg while injudici...

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Wexford 6 - No More Dying Then

During the chief inspector’s absence Constable Peach had brought in a child’s sandal which he had found in a field near Flagford, but it was the wrong size, and, anyway, John Lawrence hadn’t been wearing sandals. Wexford read the messages which had been left o...

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The Bridesmaid (2010)

It was the first time he had actually been out with his sister since the day they had all gone to Arnham’s house, and Christine and Fee had been with them then. Not since before his father’s death had he and Cheryl gone out alone. It was Saturday evening and he was on his way to Tarsus Street. It...

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Tree of Hands (2012)

Barry wondered who else had been there with Carol, apart from Iris and Jerry and the children. Terence Wand perhaps or one of those others Maureen had mentioned. Carol didn’t even want to talk about Christmas, she said she’d work right through the holiday, she hadn’t anything to celebrate. What w...

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Wexford 18 - Harm Done

They were like middle-aged people, handsome enough, vigorous and voluptuous, until set beside the flawless freshness of the young. The trees had no comparison to bear, for they were all growing old, all beginning to get tired, their leaves dry and browning the edges. Again, like aging humankind, ...

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Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box

She was often there, of course she was, but she always went home to Hastings where her parents lived. It became an obsession with him to long for her when he was alone, to imagine her letting herself in with her own key, making a phone call to a friend on his phone, running a bath and walking abo...

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Murder Being Once Done

She too had had a baby . . . During the past year Loveday Morgan had had a baby. If Loveday Morgan was Louise Sampson, Louise had had that baby. A good reason, added to the other good reasons, for not letting her mother see her until Christmas when she might have been fully recovered from the chi...

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Sins of the Fathers

Now if I'd been in your shoes that's the first thing I'd have found out. He lives at Forby Hall. I suppose he fancies himself as the lord of the manor." He glanced at his father and said quickly, "Be all right if I have the car?" "I suppose so. What are you going to tell him, Charles? He might ha...

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Wexford 10 - A Sleeping Life

He was on the run and no doubt had been for nearly three weeks now. Everything pointed to his being the killer of Rhoda Comfrey, and by Friday morning Wexford saw that the case had grown too big for him, beyond the reach of his net. Far from hoping to dissuade the Chief Constable from carrying ou...

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Guilty Thing Surprised (2012)

Something had been slumbering under her veil of apathy. The laughter brought it to life and it showed in her eyes and her trembling lips as raw terror. ‘Don’t, Denys, don’t. Oh, stop!’ She clutched his arm and shook it. ‘May we share the joke, sir?’ asked Wexford blandly. Villiers stopped laughin...

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The House of Stairs (2010)

Douglas, naturally, had had no brothers or sisters. We shook hands with the brothers and sisters-in-law and kissed Cosette on her cheek. I saw everyone else do this, so I did it too. I was there at Golders Green Crematorium with my father, my mother being past going to funerals by that time, or i...

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