We Are So Lucky that Ruth Rendell Was Fired From Her Reporting Job

Categories: Mystery & Suspense , Fiction

Ruth Rendell lost the job in Essex, England, after writing an article about a tennis club event that she was supposed to attend but didn't, thus missing the mid-speech death of the keynote speaker.  Whoops!  Fortunately for us, she took up mystery writing.

In a superficial way, she resembles Agatha Christie--British, terrifically prolific, lots of murders.  Rendell's books are more character- than plot-driven, though.  She breaks all the rules of mystery writing, but her books are wonderful.  I don't want to give any plots away, so I'm not going to name titles here.  In one serial-killer novel, the murderer only appears as a walk-on for about a page; so much for rules about planting clues.  In another, we learn halfway through the book who the serial killer is, and the question in his mind, as in ours, as how he chooses his victims?  Why do certain women just have to go, while others arouse no murderous interest?  And why didn't he pick up on the serial-killing game until his 40's?

In another book, the depressed protagonist believes the encoded notes he finds at "dead drops" are from a violent gang.  Actually, they're from posh high-school children involved in an elaborate fake spying game.  When the protagonist cracks the code, he puts the name of his wife's boyfriend on a list of people to be visited by the supposed gang members.  He hopes the thugs will intimidate the adulterous boyfriend, who unfortunately turns out also to be a pederast and (you guessed it) a serial killer.  This is also the book where a crazed employee at the pet shop where the protagonist works attacks him when the protagonist sells the mynah bird the other employee has come to love.  It's also the book where the boyfriend of his sister, murdered seventeen years ago, admits to the deed, and then turns out not to have done it at all.

Read the back cover of a Rendell novel, and you'll see nothing but glowing reviews.  In 1997, she was made a Life Peer by Prime Minister Tony Blair, so you can call her Baroness Rendell of Babergh if you want to.  She is also a Commander in the Order of the British Empire, so you can call her Dame Ruth, also.  Interestingly, she is two ranks above Paul McCartney and on the same level as Elton John. She's a rank below J. Edgar Hoover, though.  Whoops.