|
Chief Inspector Wexford has been on duty since 1964's FROM DOON WITH DEATH and his adventures, penned by Ruth Rendell, are among the most acclaimed mystery novels of the last four decades. Rendell has created a thorny puzzle for her hero in the latest series entry, END IN TEARS. Wexford and Rendell are in fine form.
One question --- who killed young mother Amber Marshalson? --- leads to a series of related mysteries that frustrates Wexford and his team. Meanwhile, Wexford confronts a familial controversy that threatens his relationship with his wife and daughter. A burgeoning relationship between two members of the investigative team provides the novel's other key subplot.
That secondary story highlights one of the book's major concerns: the intersection of different moral worldviews. Cultural, generational and gender differences fuel a host of conflicts throughout the book, but Rendell turns many a stereotype on its ear, particularly in the romance between Detective Sergeant Hannah Goldsmith --- who seems determined to put all the conventions of the past firmly behind her --- and Detective Constable Bal Bhattacharya, who is equally determined to slow down the pace of the modern relationship.
Hannah's quest to rid herself of old ways of thinking provides much of the book's comic relief:
"The occupant of number one was a horror. Hannah knew she shouldn't be ageist, but really there were limits. She realized she had an irrational dislike of old men. Not old people, only men. This prejudice shouldn't be allowed to go on and perhaps she should think about having counseling for her problem. Briefly, she lifted her fingers from the computer, thinking about whether to go back to her old counselor or find one specializing in relations with the elderly."
Hannah's inner life --- rife with disapproval of the attitudes of most everyone she comes into contact with --- is one of the novel's few lighter touches. In general, END IN TEARS maintains a dark tone. The tendrils of Rendell's plot snake over an impressive range of emotional territory and entangle a sizeable number of characters, many of them desperately unhappy.
Rendell is a patient writer, never hurrying her story along. Indeed, the action of the novel takes place over four months, a span that lets the author's plot spin out in a variety of directions. The reader gets a clear sense of the frustrations and blind alleys of an investigation. The long path is muddy from first step to last, and even an attentive reader may be forgiven for losing the thread, especially as Rendell weaves her story together from vignettes that follow various investigators hither and yon.
Any confusion felt by the reader, however, is admirably reflected in Wexford's own struggles to untangle the villainy at play. Rendell eventually brings her various storylines together in a suspenseful final act that is followed by Wexford's detailed, if convoluted, illumination of the mystery's solution. END IN TEARS is brilliantly stage-managed and of sufficient intellectual and emotional heft to satisfy any mystery connoisseur.
--- Reviewed by Rob Cline (rob__cline@hotmail.com)
 Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.
© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
Back to top.
|
