From Doon With Death: A Wexford Case - 50th Anniversary Edition (Wexford, 1)

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I've just reread this novel again after six years, and while I wouldn't change my rating, I will say that it was definitely a pleasure to have taken it up again.

But good awkward because the book is a snapshot of its time and it’s nice to see how society has changed. Also, there is no Hastings or Watson to romanticize the proceedings, and given how much I hate both characters, I'm adding a star just for that. Wexford has only a few clues: a spent match on the ground, and inscriptions in some of Margaret's books that are signed "Doon.There's an art to writing a police procedural that is also a village mystery, and Rendell is the consummate artist.

Rendell says she modeled Wexford after her father and I realized that maybe that is why this series appeals to me so much. I dislike detective series, I find it to be lazy writing more often than not and generally stay away from them. Her characters--even the good-guy cops--are conflicted, flawed, stubborn, and utterly human, and her genre fiction is the best of its kind. The novel introduced her popular recurring character Inspector Wexford, who went on to feature in 24 of her novels.Among the clues that Inspector Wexford will have to work with are a tube of lipstick in an unusual shade and a set of books with messages all inscribed with notes to Minna from Doon. The novel is somewhat outdated, dating back to 1964, but it’s a compelling story that retains all the charm of a well-written thriller. I surmise Ruth intentionally conveyed a depressed husband and household but that persisted too long, before the appearance of a clue brought any action at all. From Doon with Death was Ruth Rendell’s debut novel and concerns the disappearance of a fairly modest, conservative housewife and the subsequent discovery of her body in a wood, strangled to death. Given that those starred one of my favorite actors, George Baker, I am not sure quite how I have achieved that.

It seemed grimmer and more adult than the Christies and Chestertons I was used to, and the twist surprised me.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. Chilling, richly characterized, and ingeniously constructed, this is psychological suspense at its very finest.

As Rendell explains in her Afterword, From Doon with Death was originally written as a one-off standalone.Margaret Parsons is the flip side of extraordinary; no enemies, lives in somewhat of a rut, and has no sordid qualities about her whatsoever. Now, I have had some success with Barbara Vine (though not infallible success), and have liked Ruth Rendell less, in spite of their being the same person. Review of the Arrow Books 50th Anniversary Kindle* eBook edition (2014), with a Foreword by Ian Rankin and an Afterword by Ruth Rendell, of the original John Long Ltd. Ruth Rendell introduces here Chief Inspector Wexford, who, along with Inspector Burden, will have to solve the murder of a housewife named Margaret Parsons in the quiet English town of Kingsmarkham. I thought that there was a fair number of clues for the reader which allowed you to make the leap to the solution somewhat ahead of Wexford and Burden.