Four novels

By Ruth Rendell (aka Barbara Vine)

These are four books I've read between February and now.

I quite like some of Rendells novels, but she does have a tendency to stick to the garden path. Mental health problems stemming from childhood suffering seems to be the over riding motive for her villains and more often than not her 'heroes' are the people who recognise the mental health problems of the villains. Sometimes this works well, other times less so. Rendell's skill seems to be developing characters and she seems to relish dreaming them up. Even her walk-on characters often get described and explained in some detail, and her main characters are usually detailed in numerous rich layers. She also seems to enjoy motivation and pace, but its her characters which really shine out. Her female characters tend to be more realistic, or at least better developed. In all her books there seems to be a central character, sometimes two, who are exagerated, almost to the point of incredulity and this is often, but not always the focus of the story with mental health, or a tragedy in the past bringing these characters into conflict with each other, or the world around them.

So far I have yet to read a Rendell novel without rushing through the last pages to see what happens in the end. Even when I didn't enjoy the story very much, the characters still provoke me into staying up until 3am to reach the end.

Adam and Eve and pinch me
Three seperate women have all fallen foul of the same con-man and their lives begin to unravel when he is murdered. I liked this one a lot, mainly because of the way the character of Minty was developed and the way the story drew the frayed edges together. It was believeable and yet slightly surreal.
3/5


13 Steps down
A young man lives in a great big old house with an old land lady. As the story develops, the man's grasp on reality slips and a murder is committed. Probably the weakest of the four as there wasn't much mystery in this story and the villain was just too much of a 'sketchy creep' to engage either my empathy or my curiosity.
2/5


The Minotaur
Perhaps the best of this batch, though not as good as 'Asta's book', or 'Grasshopper'. Swedish nurse Kirsten has been hired by an eccentric English family (during the 1960's) to look after a man with Asperger’s Syndrome, except that this being the 1960's every one but the Swede thinks he is simply mad and the story revolves around the dysfunctional relationships within the family. As the story develops, jealousy, bitterness and murder all parade across the stage, with tragedy making an appearance for the grand finale.
4/5


King Solomon's carpet
More jealousy, bitterness and dysfunctional family's. This story has a lot of similarities with 'Grasshopper', but goes off in a different direction entirely. Several strange people all live in an old school building, each with their own broken dreams, as often as not revolving around the London Underground. Things start to go seriously wrong when a tall dark man in a trench coat turns up and before long a terrible crime is looming on the horizon.
3/5