This is the first book by Rendell I have read. I’ve seen her name on
author’s lists, usually coupled with P.D. James as
great-British-women-detective-novel-writers. When you see a list of
adjectives that long, certain, often unmet, expectations are created. And
then, this is a novel right smack dab in the middle of a series, which
isn’t the best place to start if the series is a continuing one and
knowledge of the previous installments are necessary for the
understanding those following.

None of that seems to matter, though. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Inspector Wexford has had some sort of bleeding in his eye leading his
doctor to prescribe rest, healthy food and no work as a cure. I gather he
prefers to work hard, drink a bit and eat badly. The novel opens with him
and his wife in London staying with his nephew, a detective for Scotland
Yard. He is being coddled, pampered and generally bored out of his wits
by his wife and niece while his nephew, lucky man, gets to go off to work
everyday. On one of his prescribed and hated daily walks, he passes a
cemetery where a murder investigation is taking place, decides to just
pop in for a quick look and stumbles on his nephew heading up the
investigation. His aid is enlisted, surreptitiously lest the women find
out, and he begins to nose around. A very young woman has been strangled
and left in a crypt. Investigators find her identity but have no luck
tracing the girl using the name she is known by and no one steps forward
to claim her as missing or lost. And sometime in the last year she has
had a full term pregnancy. Hmmmmm….

As a detective novel, it was pretty good. I had the wrong person pegged
as the killer most of the way thru the book. Actually there were about 4
candidates I came up with in the course of reading the book, none of
which actually were the killer. And while Rendell deliberately was
messing around with my mind and setting up false trails, she was also
equally giving the same sort of clues for the correct candidate.
Interesting. I want to hunt up more of her work to see if she does the
same thing in other novels. I would also like to see Inspector Wexford in
his home setting in rural England, working too hard, drinking a bit and
eating badly.

I love it when I find a new author to follow. It’s been lonely without
Peter Diamond books.