Kissing the Gunner's Daughter [Hardcover]

Ruth Rendell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1992

Detective Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford remains cool in the face of massive media attention as he sets out to investigate the stabbing death of celebrity writer Davina Flory and her husband and daughter. 35,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Rendell's last few books haven't been up to her extraordinarily high standard, but Chief Inspector Wexford's first appearance since The Veiled One (1988) is cause for celebration. The crime under investigation--the murder of monstrous old novelist Davina Flory, her younger MP husband Harvey Copeland, and her daughter Naomi, along with the shooting of granddaughter Daisy--is thick with mysteries beyond whodunit: What were the two criminals looking for beyond a bit of jewelry? How did they make their escape? What's happened to Naomi's business partner, Joanne Garland, and what's her connection to Daisy's father, George (Gunner) Jones? What links the killings to a fatal bank-robbery a year before? Wexford, ruefully treating Daisy as a replacement for his beloved actress daughter Sheila, who's deserted him for an obnoxious, postmodern novelist, patiently sifts the stories of the large cast, setting off the string of quiet, continuous, steadily deepening revelations of character that are the hallmark of Rendell's best work. No matter that the final revelation is at once surprising, predictable (Rendell falls back on one of the oldest clich‚s of the genre), and anticlimactic. The story marks a masterful return to form for the supreme living exponent of the English detective story. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

"It's hard to imagine anyone who can do more justice to a psychopath than Ruth Rendell." --Globe & Mail

-- --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 378 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Pr (June 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892963905
• ISBN-13: 978-0892963904
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,562,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good police procedural with a weak ending, January 11, 2004

By 

David Brukman (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kissing the Gunners Daughter (Mass Market Paperback)

Chief Inspector Wexford, protagonist in many Rendell books, investigates the shooting death, in an apparent robbery, of a well-known writer in her home, along with most of her family. The only survivor and eyewitness is the teenage granddaughter, Daisy, wounded and depressed. As the police investigate, a number of suspicious characters complicate the process; while Wexford's own strained relations with his daughter Sheila make Daisy's plight more poignant.

This longish mystery, with well-drawn characters, plenty of red herrings and several social classes, is enjoyable until the end. The book comes to a rapid conclusion, as Wexford uncovers the truth in a burst of insight and detection, while short-changing evidence gathering.

--inotherworlds.com

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Think quality, not quantity..., September 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Kissing the Gunners Daughter (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a long novel, and while lengthiness isn't at all a bad quality, Ruth Rendell has proven repeatedly that her tight, densely structured mysteries function best in shorter, more compact versions. Contrast "Kissing the Gunner's Daughter," a massive 380-page novel with earlier Wexfords like "Shake Hands Forever" and "Death Notes," and it's clear why.

While certainly above and beyond the average murder mystery, "Kissing the Gunner's Daughter" is a seriously overblown effort, a novel that progresses slowly for the first three quarters and then moves dizzyingly fast in the final quarter. It's hard for the reader to catch interest in the beginning, and even harder to keep track of many of the plot complexities that emerge toward the end. As opposed to her earlier works, stinging little gems that didn't waste a single word, this book is filled with enough descriptions of foliage to turn off a horticulturist.

Ruth Rendell is often compared with P.D. James. Both are superior crime novelists. For ingenious plotting and dazzling surprise twists, Rendell definitely outdoes James. But for a longer, more literate read, P.D. James is still the master.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rendell scores with a perfect hit!, May 3, 2000

By 

Billy J. Hobbs "Bill Hobbs" (Tyler, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kissing the Gunners Daughter (Mass Market Paperback)

"The thirteenth of May is the unluckiest day of the year. Things will be infinitely worse if it happens to fall on a Friday. That year, however, it was a Monday and quite bad enough....in the morning he ( Sergeant Martin of Kingsmarkham CID) had found a gun in the case his son took to school." And it was also to be Sergeant Martin's last day on earth!

In this absolute thriller by Ruth Rendell, the author begins "Kissing the Gunner's Daughter," and she doesn't let go of the suspense until the book is finished. A longtime fan of Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford series, I believe this is my favorite, and I've read them all. Rendell, often called the "Queen of Crime" by the Brits (in fairness, so has P.D. James and Ellis Peters--it depends on which publisher you're reading, I suppose!) presents her lovable Wexford and assistant Mike Burden out to solve another crime in Kingsmarkham.

Police are called when three bodies are discovered shot at Tancred House; only the seventeen-year-old daughter of one of the victims survives; it is from her that the police get their initial clues. As the story develops, of course, not all the clues are what they seem. Wexford is at his best and as the list of suspects continues to grow, it is his remarkable powers of deduction and intuition that prevail.

Along the way, the chief inspector must struggle with a rift he has recently had with his daughter Sheila--this affects his abilities to see clearly, too.

The "Sunday Times" writes that "Ruth Rendell has quite simply transformed the genre of crime writing. She deploys her peerless skills in blending the mundane, commonplace aspects of life with the potent, murky impulses of desire and greed, obsession and fear." In "Kissing the Gunner's Daughter" she holds the reader spellbound to its explosive end. It is a novel that begins and ends not with a whimper but with a bang!

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