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After reading the "Dossier" I knew I wanted to read more about Ruth Rendell and would encourage everyone to read more about her fascinating life and diverse accomplishments.
That is an unnecessarily complicated way of saying that I'll try a couple more books by Rendell to see if they become "must reads. Read all Margaret Parsons, a fairly ordinary housewife who, with her water board official husband Ron, has recently moved to Kingsmarkham, is found murdered in a field.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. In From Doon with Death, Ruth Rendell instantly mastered the form that would become synonymous with her name. I know nothing much about Inspector Wexford or Mike Burden (who actually does decent work and doesn't go around contradicting or second-guessing his boss), just that they are the law.
The Kindle editions of this book appear to be completely muddled on GR, so I've used the 50th Anniversary paperback as a proxy. Indeed, From Doon With Death, the first Wexford novel, focuses on the mystery of the death of a somewhat rather dowdy housewife who goes missing and then turns up dead. However, I do agree strongly with other reviewers that this kindle book had a large number of typos, which is very disappointing. From long experience Burden knew that whatever may happen in detective fiction, coincidence is more common than conspiracy in real life.What makes me sad is that Terrence Hardiman, who did such an amazing job narrating this, did not record the later stories when they were turned into audiobooks as I had loved his voicing of Wexford and Rendell’s prose. It is not a case of intuition, it is the answer to the mystery in so many words, in a conversation between the detective and another party, to which the reader is not privy to.
The plot is a decent one, it's intriguing enough, but I have issue with the characterisation of people, I know it's the early nineties, but I have no recollection of people being to purist and straight laced.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. Although Ruth Rendell does use certain stereotypes, it is clear that she has laid down a great basis for further books - Wexford is plain talking, intelligent and not easily swayed by a pretty face; Burdon a great sidekick and the small town of Kingsmarkham well described. Chilling, richly characterized, and ingeniously constructed, this is psychological suspense at its very finest. It's been almost twenty years since I read it, and there has always been a niggling in the back of my mind to get back to her eventually. A man reports his wife missing, and the police don't take him very seriously because she's only been missing a few hours.
How is it possible that a woman who had led such a quiet, respectable, unspectacular life could have met such a death of passion and violence?I dislike detective series, I find it to be lazy writing more often than not and generally stay away from them.
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