1 post tagged “ruth rendell”
Mystery writer Ruth Rendell is one of the best at what I think of as the Modern British Style, which combines elements of the police procedural and the deductive whodunit. End In Tears is the latest book in her Inspector Wexford series, which she started in 1964. Wexford solves crimes in the fictional village of Kingsmarkham, and the latest book shows that the classic English village mystery has had to adjust to the times. Kingsmarkham has become racially diverse, drugs and urban sprawl are altering the landscape,and, most pointedly for this case, family units have fragmented and reconstituted in unexpected ways. The traditional-minded Wexford views all this with bemusement, and sometimes alarm, and his viewpoint is as important to the book's success as his crime-solving skills.
This isn't the best in the series, and someone coming new to Rendell may want to start with some older classics - my favorites include Death Notes, Speaker of Mandarin, and perhaps my favorite, The Veiled One - but it's a good example of Rendell's ability to write a mystery with a familiar, comforting outward appearance but an unsettling center.
