Read Series: Inspector Wexford
by Author Ruth Rendell
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
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...
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 "...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...