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Adam and Eve and Pinch Me |
The last Ruth Rendell and not a Wexford; so maybe it's the reason why I found it a bit disappointing. Jerry Leach is a despicable man, using women to get money and it will be by the most stupid and naive that he will be cruelly punished...
(Laurence Martin Euler - bwl 11 October 2001) |
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Adam and Eve and Pinch Me |
This ingenious moral tale, more in the style of the author's alter ego Barbara Vine, tells how a trickster wins the confidence of (and lives off) a succession of naive young women in the England of the 1990s and eventually meets his fate. Particularly good on harassment by the media. My only criticism is the length. Although I wanted to see how the story would end, getting there needed stamina! A good read nonetheless.
(Jeremy Swann - bwl 20 September 2003) |
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Dark Corners |
This, her final novel, was posthumously published to enormous acclaim and adulation. However, despite the ecstatic blurbs, this last effort does not reach her previous high standards of insight or plot. The breakdown of the chief personality is foreseeable and repetitious, the characters in themselves rather flat, the plot certainly not original and rather pedestrian. But still, she is a legend in herself, always entertaining, and so worth reading at a dull moment or on holiday.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 79 Winter 2016) |
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From Piranha to Scurfy and Other Stories |
I usually don't like short stories but these are so good that you cannot forget them! There's a funny one 'Computer Séance' where a psychic fails to predict her own murder or 'The Wink' where a country girl takes her revenge on her rapist thirty or forty years later! Very good reading.
(Laurence Martin Euler - bwl 7 February 2001) |
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Grasshopper |
Long but riveting, this is the highly original story of a group of young student and dropout friends who live together in Maida Vale (London) and spend much of their time climbing out of their top-floor window and exploring the rooftops of the area. Gradually fear, violence and treachery enter their lives, destroying the delicate equilibrium they have established. Wonderful descriptions of London seen from an unusual angle. A cliffhanger of a climax.
(Jeremy Swann - bwl 14 July 2002) |
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Portobello |
Ruth Rendell's Portobello reaffirmed my faith in her as giving us a good light read, because some of her latest books were disappointing. Portobello is quite different from her others and only other fans will appreciate this, in fact it almost seems a "Barbara Vine" book of hers. Get it at once and curl up by the fire and see what it's all about . . . in Portobello.
(Ange Guttierez Dewar - bwl 49 January 2009) |
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The Babes in the Wood |
Sophie and her brother Giles, both young teenagers, have disappeared along with the woman who was staying with them while their parents went to Paris for the weekend. The rain has been flooding the area for days, and their mother is convinced that they have all drowned. But the water isn't over four feet high and they were all good swimmers. And the rain keeps coming...Inspector Wexford is on the job! A great read.
(Julie Higgins - bwl 20 September 2003) |
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The Girl Next Door |
This is much more than a thriller, here the author juggles expertly with time, with personalities, with old and new emotions, violent death and death without violence, the merry-go-round of life through a microscope. A masterly portrayal of old age, based on all those who knew each other in their youth, about real tunnels and the labyrinths made by life, City and suburbia, past and present, this stand-alone belongs more to literature than to entertainment.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 79 Autumn 2015) |
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The Monster in the Box |
Being an Inspector Wexford fan, I eagerly grabbed this latest Rendell, only to be very disappointed at the beginning, convinced that even she at last was 'written out' and reduced to writing pot-boilers. Enormous pretension, erroneous assumption. Wily Rendell leads us up the garden path with her hesitations and 'futile' reminiscences, and her new 'Wexford' is a tour de force. As usual!
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 55 Winter 2010) |
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Thirteen Steps Down |
Mix Cellini is a superstitious failure, obsessed with the life of John Christie, a famous murderer of the1950s. When he himself has a go at murder, you really want to help him because he's so inept! Despite being extremely well-read, his very old landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, is also a complete failure when faced with love, life or simply reality. One of them is going to kill the other. . . Happy reading!
(Laurence Martin Euler - bwl 30 June 2005) |
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