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2.0 out of 5 stars
Shouldn't a mystery mystify?, Dec 2 2000
I don't know about you, but a mystery is supposed to mystify. Part of the fun is not knowing "Whodunit" until close to the end of the story (the closer, the better).In my opinion, if the writer can't prevent us from guessing who the guilty one is until close to the end, then he/she has failed in the foremost goal of a mystery novelist. In this novel, I figured out the "key" to the story (and therefore whodunit) less than half-way through. Since I wanted to be surprised--fooled even--I kept hoping I was wrong. I wasn't. If this is a typical Rendell, I may not read any of her others.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
The plot's the thing, Aug 8 2000
When plain, unattractive Rhoda Comfrey is found stabbed to death in a field outside Kingsmarkham, it's business as usual for Chief Inspector Wexford and his hilariously prudish sidekick, Burden. This convoluted case is even more frustrating than usual, however; virtually no one, aside from an indifferent relative, seems to remember the victim, and Wexford finds himself going around in circles in his desperate search for even the slightest of leads. His only clue is a man named Grenville West, who proves as elusive and enigmatic as Rhoda Comfrey herself.The most intriguing mystery here, aside from whodunit, is the truth about Rhoda Comfrey's double life. Wexford arrives at his solution through the same combination of wit, intuition, and instinct (as opposed to straightforward, by-the-book detection) he displays in all his cases. True to form, Ruth Rendell delivers a positively stunning twist at the end, and of course, it caught me totally off guard. Unfortunately, the surprise revelation has practically zero emotional resonance. It's easy to admire Rendell's typically first-rate plotting, but her manipulations here lack the psychological dimension of her best work. And say what you will, but I didn't buy the killer's motive for a minute. A corpse should have a reason for being a corpse; even Agatha Christie understood that. I almost always love Rendell's spare, understated prose, but for some reason, this book is neither as sharply written nor as witty as it should be. There's surprisingly little of the narrative tension and momentum so evident in SHAKE HANDS FOREVER (still, for my money, the best Inspector Wexford mystery). Instead, A SLEEPING LIFE has the same slack pace and implausible character motivation so evident in SOME LIE AND SOME DIE (still, for my money, the worst Inspector Wexford mystery). Not a bad book--Rendell is practically incapable of that--but far from being the great one it should have been.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Yes, probably the best Wexford mystery, Jul 12 2000
Rendell is a difficult writer to pin down; while, working as she does within the mystery/crime genre, her books inhabit different areas of that particular literary country. The Wexford series has always been best classified as police procedural, while the othe books are more psychological, plotted less closely along conventional crime novel lines. Within the Wexford series, Rendell has of late been injecting a lot of social commentary into her books and the plotting - Rendell fans must admit that her puzzles are easier to figure out than most - has fallen off. Her best crafted Wexford mysteries (as opposed to "novels" or "literature," which came a bit later) were from the 1970s (here, 1978). Rendell's best, most prominent characteristics are all here; the emphasis on psychological makeup and motive, the ability to draw characters and relationships with only a few lines of dialogue or interior monologue, the presence of details that few other writers put to such good use in delineating said characters, the use of dead ends, mistakes, and wrong assumptions and guesses by Wexford in the exposition. While Rendell is outstanding at what she does, not all crime fiction fans like her stuff. One would do worse than to begin here to find out where you stand. If you like this, moving on to other Wexford books, or the darker, non-series classics like "A Dark-Adapted Eye" is only a small step. If not, forget it.
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