Classic Police Procedural. This 1967 novel was the third novel in the well-regarded Inspector Reg Wexford series of 24 novels, which went from 1964 From Doon with Death to No Man’s Nightingale in 2013. The first was 226 pages and the last was 304, so it seems that the author was able to resist the sprawl that pumped mysteries up to the 400+ neighborhood, ironically as lengthy as their Victorian forebears, the novels of sensation. Heaven knows, I like a little back story for characters in genre novels, but I don’t have to follow them through every life crisis that dogs us average middle-aged people with our tedious jobs, our unfathomable spouses, our delinquent kids, our demanding dependent parents, and our unlovely in-laws. Enough in real life, thank you very much.
Wolf to Slaughter – Ruth Rendell
Ruby Branch makes money on the side running a disorderly house on the cheating side of Kingsmarkam, in Sussex. No names, no identification, and for a small amount of cash, a couple can snatch hours of undisturbed lovemaking,
Or whatever antics cheating couples get up to. Because one night a man with a knife tuned the love nest into a slaughterhouse. The blood-soaked carpet is desperately cleaned by house-proud Ruby, but Inspector Reg Wexford and his second-in-command Mike Burden take it away for testing. They had received an anonymous letter alerting them that ‘a girl called Ann’ was killed on the same night that Anita Margolis went missing. Anita is the party-girl sister of artist Rupert Margolis, a character Rendell uses to satirize creative types who turn other people into lackeys because as artists they can’t be expected to do dishes.
Stolid Reg Wexford and disapproving Jack Burden are often at the center of the questioning of persons of interest but in this novel they are moved off-stage to give space to the character of the new policer officer, Mark Drayton. Mark becomes enthralled by a beautiful young woman who assists in her father’s dingy shop. Some readers may complain about the lack of strong female characters in this one but Rendell makes up for this by an insightful examination of young male psychology. On top of the usual mindless will to possess and control, Drayton is estranged from his own feelings and hasn’t the faintest notion of what his girlfriend feels or wants.
Rendell impresses the reader with her grasp of the light and dark sides of character, the craziness that bubbles under the surface of some personalities. Anita Margolis is good with money and has a steadying influence on her head-in-the-clouds brother, but she acts impulsively and parties way too much. Ruby seeks order through cleaning but throws her loyalty and love away on worthless small-time crook Monkey Matthews. Noreen Anstey has a good marriage with a fine man and she throws her teaching job and marriage away for a stupid affair.
Rendell is very good at the mystery and suspense elements
of her stories. But both are secondary to her characterization, which makes the
unfolding of plot and clever surprising twists believable. More a novelist
working with mystery and crime elements than a mystery writer, she calls to
mind Andrea Camilleri and the Montalbano mysteries.
Click on the title to go to the review.
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Classic Epistolary Novel: Augustus – John Williams
Classic Comic Novel: Thank you, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
Classic Short Stories: New York Stories – John O’Hara
Classic Air Pilot Memoir: Wind, Sand, and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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Classic 19th Century Novel: Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite – Anthony Trollope
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