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 by their activities and their interests. Mix Cellini, in particular, appears dangerous, especially to Gwendolen Chawcer, his landlady, and Nerissa Nash, super model. But it takes awhile for the reader to understand how these three people and their intersections of life, friends and work are going to make something extraordinary occur. When the denouement is at hand, I felt like a cap pistol went off rather than a cannon. However, it is a good thriller which relies heavily on the characters' personalities to create suspense.Mix, who works as a Fiterama repairman, has an obsession with two people: Nash, who he is stalking, and the life and death of a famous serial killer, Reggie Christie. Mix is fascinated especially with how Christie buried all of his victims under the floorboards and walls of his house. For awhile, Mix is in control of himself. But eventually he is missing client appointments to repair their exercise equipment and the company he works for wants him to come in and talk about the complaints. It's difficult to do his job and follow the beautiful model, too. In order to meet her, he has to find out where she lives and where she goes, so he must spend a lot of hours following her and her friends, trying to finagle relationships with them or somehow create a plausible situation to become her lover. In the meantime, he cannot stop buying books about Reggie and reading over and over how he killed a dozen women. He walks by Reggie's ex-property as often as he can. When he sees that Chawcer is advertising for a renter, he takes it because it's a few blocks away from where all the murders occurred. Chawcer is an 80-year-old woman who never left home. Her house is a mouldering crumbling small mansion of antiques and dust. She spends her days reading 19th century literature and she has no TV set. Raised as an upper-class Victorian by her authoritarian, but gentle father and her conservative mother, she literally has almost no experience of the world outside of her house. Her dead parents' fortune is dwindling so she takes in a boarder, but she doesn't like Mix and she avoids him - easy since he lives in an apartment on the third floor. She really has no interest in the house and doesn't take care of it, but fortunately she has faithful friends, one of which happens to be Nerissa's mother, who frequently stop by the dirty mansion. Mix hates them, but he is always polite despite their old woman ways. He is a disorganized loner who lives in his dreams and fantasies, barely able to distinguish them from reality. He presents as a regular 30 year old man, able to handle customers and his job, until he begins dating a woman he believes to be the key to meet Nerissa. Danila works as an exercise teacher at the Shoshana's Spa and Health Club where he followed Nerissa. He thinks the model is a member. Danila is very lonely and has no clue about Mix's hidden motives. But Mix can't stop comparing her to Nerissa, and soon he, angrily, can't see any more use for her after she explains Nerissa is not a regular Club member, but is seeing Madame Shoshana in her Soothsayer role in her room upstairs from the Club.Nerissa, a normal girl who was suddenly swept into the dizzy world of celebrity because of her beauty, feels she must do the things that are expected of her as a celebrity. She is compliant and dutiful, a nice person. She has a crush on her childhood neighbor, but whenever she visits her happy parents, the now stockbroker avoids her. She is aware she has a stalker, but is too nice to confront him. Then she runs into Mix unexpectedly at Chawcer's house, where her mother needed a ride for a visit to the elderly aristocratic anachronism. Chawcer is only beginning to be disturbed by the behavior of her boarder, who is wandering around the house when she asked him to stick to his apartment. Chawcer, who has been lost in the Victorian past for decades, is remembering her own past after seeing a death notice of the wife of a doctor she developed a crush on 50 years ago. She starts fantasizing about becoming her ex-doctor's wife, so leaves her house to find an Internet cafe. From her newspaper reading, she knows somehow these computers can find people. This book is busy with characters and their mental lives, but with these three meeting each other, Chawcer, Mix and Nash, a tragedy is brewing. The fantasies each are nurturing are not possible given how they actually live and are leading them into regrettable decisions. Everyone is going to get hurt if they don't open their eyes to reality. But Mix, when reality begins to crush him, having studied his favorite serial killer for decades, wonders if bodies can really remain undiscovered if hidden in a house. When circumstances give him an opportunity to copy his second most admired role model, he learns too late the books missed a detail.What is that sickening smell coming from under the floorboards? (view spoiler)[ Hecate - the maiden, the mother and the crone. Which characters are the three faces of Hecate? Hehe. The brief introduction of a real witch was sort of a fun Easter Egg! (hide spoiler)]
Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places, 29 Dec 2005 4.99 stars "In Rendell's view, we seldom understand how life works and how little control we have over it; criminals are the biggest dolts of all for risking so much on schemes that are bound to go awry. What's more, murderers also lack sympathetic imagination (as opposed to the narcissistic imagination of fantasy)." So says, Ruth Rendell, and as we read this novel, we say "I Believe, I Believe!" Mix Cellini is a work-out equipment specialist. He repairs the "things". He also obsesses about John Christie, the English serial killer, and he knows everything about him. This gives us the first clue. There are many serial killers in many mysteries, but Ruth Rendell's is the best. Mix keeps us on the edge of our seat. He is funny at times; he eats junk food and drinks strange concoctions of booze. He is in fact a very strange man, but likeable in some sense. He rents rooms at St Blaise House in the Notting Hill area which he keeps spic and span, from Gwendolen Chawcer. Gwendolen has lived in this same house since she was born- and the house is old and decrepit. Gwendolen lives in her library and her bedroom. Many rooms, none of them clean and Gwendolen lives in her own little world. She is caught up in the 1940's when she first fell in love, and she has never moved on. She, in fact, wears the same clothes. Well made and expensive, yes, but old. Gwendolen fell in love with her mother's physician many years ago, and the unrequited love has never bloomed. She lives her life in her old memories. She does not much like Mr. Cellini, nor he her. Both are obsessed. Both are strange and fixed in their ways, and that is where the difference lies. Gwendolen is harmless in her obsession. Mix has two obsessions, John Christie and the model Nessar Nash. He believes that Nessar is in love with him, and he stalks her. She notices him, but ignores him. She has her own story and that is almost as interesting as Mix and Gwendolen. Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes. Mix is superstitious about the number thirteen and has always felt dogged by ill-luck. In St Blaise House where he lives, there are thirteen steps down to the landing below his rooms. Ahhhh, now we know a little bit more about the whys but not the wherefores, that is for you to decipher. How much did I love this book? I gave it to my plane seatmate. I finished the book as the plane landed in Oregon. She had told me how much she loved mystery thrillers, and this is the best there is. Holiday Spirit and all. 4.99 stars, why? The ending was mundane. 99% of the novel was first-rate, one of the best I have read. The ending deserves, well, it deserves a better ending. Ruth Rendell dedicated this novel to P.D.James, she is now her equal. Highly recommended. prisrob
What do You think about Thirteen Steps Down (2005)?
Brilliant.Ruth Rendell is quickly becoming one of my all time favourites in crime fiction. For one, her novels have something original in them. They are different from the majority of crime novels I have read. Somehow they seem to be more personal and that makes them so much more intimidating.This time the main setting is St Blaise House, where old and old-fashioned Mrs Chawcer has spent her whole life with only her memories of her young and forever unfulfilled love for company, untouched by outside world. That is, until young Mix Cellini moves in the flat upstairs. Mix is a fierce admirer of the notorious John Christie, a serial killer hung in the 50s. He is also about to marry a rising star in the modelling world, Narissa Nash. Not that she is aware of that yet, but surely she wouldn't reject him? Once she finds out about his existence? He has no doubt about this and spends days and nights fantasizing and plotting how to make it happen. Trying to turn his plans into actions leads him to Shoshana's spa and that's when everything starts going wrong. Unable to control his anger Mix founds himself in a situation much similar to his infamous idol's...What I love about Rendell's books is the insight in the characters' minds. The different ways their different minds work. The little things, the details. Like the overconfident, yet contradicting Mix, who's never wrong, yet has been followed by ill luck his whole life. And on the other hand the famous and gorgeous Narissa, aware of her impact on people, yet self-conscious. And finally Mrs Chawcer, arrogant and quick to point out other people's faults where she doesn't acknowledge her own, yet haunted by memories of long lost past and naive fantasies.The book is not fast-paced, don't expect an action movie in writing, but it doesn't make it any less compelling, rather the opposite. You get a complex picture of the main three characters inside out and you end up finding yourself facing their dilemmas with them, thinking the same way they do, accompanying them through their troubles. Once you get into the story, you won't be able to get out of it until you finish, and even then it will leave you thinking...Brilliant.
—Misha
Dona Rosenfield started me reading her.If you haven't tried Rendell yet and you like to read, then you really should. She has won almost every coveted mystery prize, and in England she is outdone only by P.D. James (to whom this book is dedicated). Her non-Inspector Wexford stories are not mysteries but rather psychological thrillers and this one is no different. I consider her a master at characterization and great at complex and interesting plots. This book is totally in keeping with her previous delights. No one seems able to get into the minds and psyches of troubled individuals like her. I was quite unbalanced by the first book I ever read of hers, Live Flesh. It gave me goose bumps seeing into Victor's mind! She seems to have psychosis of the criminal mind down cold.But I digress. The unfortunate focus of this novel is the two obsessions of Mix Cellini. He is fixated on past serial killer, Reggie Christie, who killed then raped 8 or more women in the 1940s. His other obsession is beautiful model Nerissa Nash. Much of his time is split between reading and thinking about Christie or stalking Nerissa. He even takes on extra repair work at the gym where he believes she works out.In moving close to the home of Christie, he ends up renting and renovating the top floor of an old home owned by Gwendolyn Chawser. To say she is an odd duck would be putting it lightly. She's an old, eccentric spinster living in her dirty and decaying childhood home which she has never left. She escapes from reality by incessantly reading and re-reading books packed into every nook and cranny of the house. (To clarify, the reading bit isn't what makes her so bizarre.)The story takes a sinister turn when Mix brings home a young girl he met at Nerissa's gym whom he is pumping for information regarding the supermodel. Caught up in the heat of the moment, he kills her after a minor argument and then plots to dispose of the body emulating Christie's methods. Here's where we really get a glimpse into his crazy mind; we are carried along with his obsessive path and imagination on a fast track to a nervous breakdown.Doesn't sound too upbeat, does it? But it's a fascinating read and I would recommend you try one of Rendell's books that doesn't star her famous inspector.
—Mckinley
I enjoyed this book, to a certain extent. What I liked about it was the insight it gave me on a distured pyschopath's mind and the eerie tone that set up the right mood! What I didn't enjoy, though, was the slow pace that the events progressed at and at some point, I got really bored... But then again, Rendell got the hair on my head to stand up by the end! It isn't the best book I've read so far, but it isn't the worst either. Despite the great pyschological analysing done, and the good aspects that make this book a thriller, I wouldn't recommend it for Reading.
—Laudy Issa
