Customer Reviews

The Best Man to Die

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This particular Rendell mystery is loveable for its credible character development and Rendell's unique ability to convey life in the English countryside. If, like me, you have followed every detail in the life of Wexford and his sidekick Burden you shouldn't miss this one. The plot is classic Rendell: complexity with credibility and writing as smooth as silk. She's so easy to read you may overlook her expertise. One of the best living authors and thankfully prolific!

Ruth Rendell has twenty Detective Chief Inspector Wexford crime novels in her arsenal, and this was number four in the series. Wexford is a big, heavy man, not particularly good looking, happily married, who has one plain Jane daughter and a stunning one who is a famous stage actress. Rendell never really brings the wife to life; she's just there. Wexford is a conventional guy, not a boozer like many British police detectives. He spars with his sidekick, the prosaic Inspector Burden.
This mystery is built around the intense friendship between two working class men. One of them is a dodgy little lorry driver who has too much money for a man in his pay grade. Two police cases intersect: one is a murder and the other a highway accident with fatalities. Wexford goes about the job of interviewing witnesses thinking, "If only they knew that to him their revelations were but bricks in the house he was trying to build, rungs on the ladder of discovery..."
If you're alert, you can figure out fairly early on who the murderer is and what the connection is between the two cases. It's a well-told tale with insights into British life and the class system. Rendell keeps your interest with some flinty characters, interesting details embedded in the story, and a vivid town setting. Her characters often are unlikable, but there is a feeling of reality that comes across. These aren't stick figures or stereotypes--now if only she could breathe life and personality into Wexford's spouse. Not the best of the Wexford series in subtlety and grace, but with a few flashes of humor, it does nicely as an introduction to the series.

As I'm lazy, I'm just going to copy out the official blurb (plus, I can't say it any better):

Jack Pertwee was getting married in the morning.

Charlie Hatton drove his lorry eleven hours down from Leeds just to be there. Charlie was Jack's best friend and he would be his best man. When the two parted at the Kingsbrook bridge, jack felt as though his life was just beginning. But for Charlie Hatton, life was about to end.

Detective Chief Inspector Wexford wondered why the fatal Fanshawe car accident kept upsetting his concentration on the Hatton murder. There couldn't be a connection. Fanshawe had been a wealthy stockbroker, Charlie Hatton a cocky little lorry driver with some illegal dealing.

But was it just a coincidence that Hatton had been killed on the day following that of Mrs Fanshawe's regaining consciousness?

On first read, several years ago when I was about 12, this book didn't strike me as one of the greatest Wexford's. On re-reading it, my estimation is much, much improved. The Best Man to Die is another excellent Wexford novel from Rendell's early period. It doesn't have the wonderful, vicious darkness of Wolf to the Slaughter or the unique quality of Some Lie or Some Die, but it remains a very very excellent and clever mystery that will likely confound even the most practiced of crime-fiction readers. It did me, even though I had read it before! I could remember, just about, who, but for the life of me I had no idea why, until Rendell revealed all in one of those excellent last-revelation chapters that she does so so well.

At this point in the series, neither Wexford nor Burden had begun to fully develop quite yet; primarily these early books are plot novels and character foible novels. Still, Wexford is certainly beginning to show hints of how interesting he is, and his family life begins to take on the wonderful life it does later in the series. Here, actually, Wexford seems slightly out-of-character; he's less patient, possibly. Less tolerant perhaps? Certainly, he wasn't quite as warm as in many of the other books, but his skills as a detective are borne out wonderfully in an excellent mystery.

The Best Man to Die (again, one of Rendell's treasures that have been left out of print. I doubt you'll be able to get this anywhere except second-hand) is a great, impeccably written mystery. Rendell dissects her characters motivations marvellously. I would recommend this, of course, very highly indeed, but I don't think it's really the place to begin reading Wexford.

Inspector Wexford investigates the murder of a cocky little lorry driver with too much spare cash, which seems somehow interconnected with a fatal traffic accident. When he finally decides who the culprit is, and orders an arrest, he seems to have put together all the puzzle pieces. Unfortunately, a prosecutor would probably say that he lacked sufficient hard evidence to prove his case. At most, he could make a circumstantial case involving motive and opportunity, but I think a good defense lawyer could shred it. A few good red herrings, a lot of atmosphere, a surprise dénoument, but ultimately lacking in sharpness.

There is a shortage of truly likeable characters in this one, but they are indelibly drawn and real. Rendell's Inspector Wexford mysteries are all superior.However, I did have trouble with one crucial aspect of the story and that is with what first appears to be a subplot, but proves to be connected to the primary case in question. I want to avoid a spoiler, but my difficulty deals with the original identification and original supposition concerning one of the fatalities in the secondary plot thread. It just does not quite compute. This is still a compelling and satisfying British mystery from one of the best practioners of the form.

This was the fourth or fifth Wexford book that I have read and it certainly lived up to expectations - nothing too thought provoking but a typical well-crafted Ruth Rendall detective story. The characterization was again standard fare with characatures rather than substance but there is only so much one can cram into 150-odd pages. However, the plot moves along with some pace and unless one thinks too hard about "who did it", in which case like me you'll probably guess who did do it, the book is a great way to while away two or three spare hours.

Not your usual predictable murder mystery. I usually don't like the Inspector Wexford stuff, but this one was outstanding, read it!

Jack Pertwee and Marilyn Thompson are to marry and Jack's friend George is treating him at the bar. Charlie Hatton is to be best man.

Wexford finds the dead man, Charlie Hatton, in the river while walking a dog. Ordinarily policemen don't discover bodies. It turns out the dead man was late for the wedding and there was consternation. The groom doesn't want to get married. He wants to do what is right and proper.

The dead man had been vain, aggressive, malicious. He had been carrying a lot of money. Wexford pursues his investigation. He goes into houses where tiredness and poverty are chronic. The lines of inquiry grow complex. Hijacked trucks may stand for several different things.

This is an interesting, well-plotted mystery. Wexford and the dog are among the more amusing aspects of the book.

No one can complain that award winning Brit mystery author Ruth Rendell is anything but prolific - her some fifty novels span a career launched in the early 1960's now into our new millennium. About one-third of the stories, as herein with "Best Man", feature Chief Inspector Reg Wexford, who heads the Kingsmarkham district, which seems to correspond to maybe a county sheriff-type jurisdiction. In this tale, a fairly mild, tavern stag party on the eve of Jack Pertwee's wedding is marred to say the least by the murder of his best man (and great friend) Charlie Hatton. Though by trade a truck driver, Charlie had recently been flashing big bills, buying rounds of drinks and spending tidy sums on gifts for his wife and friends. Yet he was unpopular with most people, and apparently involved in some shady deals involving truck hi-jacks, hence the wads of otherwise unexplained cash and a mouthful of expensive false teeth! Unfortunately, these circumstances lead to a plethora of motives and suspects for the crime, and of course it's up to Wexford, with sidekick Inspector Burden, to hash through all the clues to zero in on a killer. Distracting them from their duties was a car crash a few weeks earlier that killed two people, of whom one, a young lady, turned out to be difficult to identify. Whether the print space devoted to this side issue comes to bear on the Hatton affair was yet another angle of the mystery for most of the book.

Compared to today's suspenseful modern crime and mystery thrillers, this nearly 40-year old work seems pretty tame. There is little but a straightforward storyline to captivate our interest, and the characters, even the leading ones, are only so sparsely described it left us relatively uncaring in the process. That they were mostly unpleasant folks, unhappy with their affairs, doesn't help, leaving us almost as blasé about events as were they. Some of the social commentary about the differences in "class" between the policemen, the dentist, and the other everyday characters seemed rather dated, as were the sums of money that they all talked about (expressed in British currency of course). While a modest twist at the end gained us some final satisfaction, we would not highly rate this book for its entertainment value. We suspect from Rendell's outstanding reputation that her more recent works might be better indicators of her craft, but her 1969 "Best Man To Die" is little more than a couple hours of modestly pleasant pastime.

While the Inspector Wexford novels are generally good, this one is a little dated. The references to money, with an indication that 120 pounds sterling was a large amount that made a man flush, needs to be taken in the context of the time and the country, i.e., the UK where pay scales may have been a quarter the amount in the US. The amount noted, at that time a little under $300 in US funds, would not have been exceptionally high by US standards even in 1969. I also had a bit of a problem with the writing style as the author tends to jump from one character and scene to another while going from one written sentence to the next. It would be nice to have a break indicating a change of scene, even a blank line on the page. This is an editorial problem which I blame on the publisher.

The plot is complex, and initially starts out with a number of seemingly unrelated events. It involves marriages, mistresses, children, a dog, some amount of crime, of course a couple murders, people not cooperating with the police, and class distinctions with some working class people just trying to keep their heads above water.

When the police investigate a man's murder, the investigation opens up various cans of worms. There are people making a little money on the side, women looking for rich men, men looking for rich women, married men chasing around, and the police trying to tie everything together. Overall an interesting plot of 201 pages in this edition.