Customer Reviews

Not in the Flesh

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Ruth Rendell's "Not in the Flesh" deals with buried skeletons, both the physical and the metaphorical kind. Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford and his Detective Sergeant, Hannah Goldsmith, report to Old Grimble's Field in Flagford when an elderly man and his dog come upon an old set of remains. Nothing is found with the body to indicate the man's name, place of residence, occupation, or cause of death. However, since the victim was wrapped in a sheet before being buried, it seems apparent that he was murdered and then concealed to avoid discovery. Wexford and his team interview the area's residents, but it is a tedious business, and they emerge with very little to show for their efforts. The mystery deepens when Inspector Burden and DC Damon Coleman discover a second body hidden under a woodpile in the cellar of Sunnybank, an abandoned bungalow on the Grimble property.

Two possible witnesses prove to be particularly irascible and maddening. One is fifty-year old John Grimble, "a bad-tempered bugger" who, for many years, has been obsessively ranting about the planning authority's refusal to grant him permission to use his late stepfather's land to build multiple homes. The other is eighty-four year old Irene McNeil, who had kept watch over the Grimble place when she lived nearby with her late husband, Ronald. Irene is a self-absorbed snob, as well as a racist and a congenital liar; Wexford has his hands full trying to maintain a gentlemanly demeanor while dealing with this infuriating woman. Another person who may be able to shed light on the crimes lives next door to the Grimbles. He is Owen Tredown, an author who is dying of liver cancer. In an unconventional arrangement, Tredown resides with his current wife, an icy and off-putting woman named Maeve, and his ex-wife, Claudia Ricardo, who is flighty and prone to embarrassing revelations. The two women appear to get along better than one would expect, but there is nonetheless something undeniably creepy about the whole arrangement.

Identifying the two sets of remains proves to be no mean feat, and the reader must slog through a multitude of dead ends and red herrings before the truth finally emerges. However, this labor-intensive investigation lends verisimilitude to the proceedings, showing just how many pieces of evidence and false leads the detectives must sift through before they achieve that elusive breakthrough. A little luck doesn't hurt, either. In addition, Rendell includes a subplot about racism in England and the horrifying practice of female genital mutilation that is still practiced in certain cultures. In Kingsmarkham, where Wexford lives with his wife, Dora, there is a close-knit community of immigrants from Somalia. Although most of the Somalis are quiet, hard-working, and law-abiding, some of their neighbors are not comfortable with their presence. Wexford's daughter, who is a social activist, asks her father to prevent a five-year old Somali girl from being "circumcised." Although this is an important and timely topic, it seems tacked on to the story and does not mesh well with the rest of novel.

The vivid characters take center stage here. As she has done for decades, Rendell trains her gimlet eye on the frailties, foibles, and self-destructive tendencies that lead human beings to behave perversely. Greed, pride, stubbornness, rationalization, and stupidity are all on glorious display here. Seldom in a Rendell book do you meet characters who are kind and altruistic. The author has made a career of studying the dark and decayed roots of emotionally disturbed people; no one does it better. She also examines family relationships in all of their tortured complexity, and poignantly observes how sad it is for the people left behind when loved ones go missing. Rendell's fine descriptive writing, sharp dialogue, and dry humor more than make up for the fussy and complicated plot, with its unlikely coincidences and far-fetched elements.

Inspector Wexford is the novel's moral center, acting as a one-man Greek chorus. He is compassionate, philosophical, psychologically astute, and a human lie detector. His years of experience prove to be as valuable as the marvels of the Internet, which he disdains as "more trouble than it was worth." Wexford is a natural leader, an advocate for the underdog, and a tireless pursuer of justice. He and his able colleagues serve as a counterbalance to the shameful actions of the novel's villains. When someone suggests that catching a killer after he has done away with someone doesn't matter that much, Wexford strongly disagrees: "You're wrong there. It matters....Killing is the worst thing anyone can do and society needs to punish the perpetrator of such a crime for its own well-being." In a world filled with duplicity, we need people like Chief Inspector Wexford to balance the scales.

This audio book is more than a double treat, it's a sure fire can't-stop-listening-to winner when you pair the estimable acting talents of Tim Curry as narrator and the award winning writing of Ruth Rendell.

Curry won many of us with his unforgettable debut in the cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He has made numerous screen appearances since then, playing diverse roles in such films as Kinsey, Charlie's Angels, The Hunt for Red October and Annie. This actor simply can't be pigeon-holed - on stage he has been nominated thrice for a Tony.

His audio book narrations are as diverse as his professional career ranging from children's titles to science fiction to romance to fantasy and, of course, this stellar rendering of Not In The Flesh. For starters Curry has a wonderful voice, low, deep, strong. It is malleable, if you will, easily moving from tone to tone, intonation to intonation. Born in Britain he retains a hint of a British accent which, of course, serves us well in this story.

What more can be said about Ruth Rendell or how much more praise can be heaped upon her? Surely she has numerous mantels to accommodate all her awards, among them are three Edgars, three Gold Daggers, a Silver Dagger, and on it goes.

For this reader/listener Inspector Wexford is one of her finest creations. Wexford was introduced to us some 35 years ago and by now he's an old friend to many. "Old" is a key word here as he's grown a bit more codger-like with the passage of time, yet just as sharp, clever, and opinionated as ever.

This time out a truffle hunter and his sniffing dog are having great good luck in the Sussex countryside - that is until the competent canine unearths what's left of a human hand. It's left to Wexford to identify the deceased who has probably been hidden in the ground for over a decade. Another confounding problem for the master detective is the inordinate number of people in that area who have simply vanished.

As always Rendell's cast of characters is pure delight from close-mouthed residents to workmen who may or may not have seen anything to a downright nasty old lady with "loglike swollen legs."

To read a work by Rendell is stay-up-late pleasure; to hear it is prime time entertainment.

- Gail Cooke

In her 21st Inspector Wexford novel, the extremely prolific Ruth Rendell at age 78 is not writing at the top of her form; this is not vintage stuff, rather it is Rendell Lite. We are see-sawed back and forth through interview after interview with the same witnesses. How do I fill up 303 pages? Oh, yes, I'll go back and interview the two wives again, or I'll introduce the theme of African female mutilation.
This being Ruth Rendell all of this manic plotting is done with more success and aplomb than others could do it, but her style isn't as elegant and as brilliant as in her other books. Perhaps she has grown sick of dull, old Wexford. He's a much more gentlemanly detective than Ian Rankin, for example, has dreamed up in Rebus.
So many witnesses interviewed, and so many of the witnesses have detailed memories that are astounding. There are two seemingly unrelated murders. One goes back eight years, one eleven years so the forensics people here are dealing with skeletal remains.
Wexford's wife Dora actually does helpful things in this book rather than serve as the cardboard cutout spouse seen in some earlier books. The team of detectives are not clearly delineated; Peter Robinson in his procedurals gives us fuller portraits.
In several of the many, many interviews, Wexford doesn't ask a crucial question; he and Rendell are saving it for later. Red herrings, like pennies from heaven, rain down all over the narrative landscape.
When she finally gets to her denouement, it seems to make a kind of sense which doesn't quite flow out of a lot of the nonsensical story plotting that has preceded it.
Perhaps it's time for Inspector Wexford to step down and get a computer-savvy guy in there.

Ruth Rendell's 21st in the Inspector Wexford series amply demonstrates how her most frequent protagonist shows no signs of stopping, or of allowing himself to become outdated: here he wrestles with the matter of two unearthed bodies that cannot be identified and with the very timely matter of British attitudes towards female circumcision among its growing African population. Perhaps the only thing that shows Rendell a bit out of step is all of her characters obsession with what they themselves call "political correctness": whether against it, all for it, or just mystified by it (whatever it exactly is), they all seem to be behaving as if they were in the front line of the culture wars in the early 1990s and refer to it constantly. It gets very distracting. The subplot involving Wexford's friends among the Kingsmarkham Somali community and their practice of circumcision among their young girls never seems wholly integrated into the major murder mystery, which starts off brilliantly though its solution is much too easily apparent three-quarters of the way through the text. There are, as always, plenty of Rendell's superb gallery of eccentric suspects, particularly a snobbish upper-class widow who inspires both sympathy and revulsion in Wexford and his assistants.

What a shame that another reviewer did not bother to read Rendell's account of female genital mutilation as written in this book. It is well-known in the UK that Baroness Rendell is a long term campaigner against the practice. In this book she introduces the subject in an enormously sensitive way and is able to get across not only the horror of it, but also the reasons many people from Africa believe in doing it to their daughters. It's worth reading the book for the mystery, as described by others, but don't gloss over the tiny sub-plot with FGM in it. You might learn something.

That said, the book is excellent, as are all Rendell's books. Excellent writing, good characterisation, and a good plot that is all tied together in the end. I particularly liked the introduction of the woman writing a book about her long-missing father, and the gifts she had inherited from him became clear as the story went on. Thank you Baroness Rendell for publicising FGM in your book, and please keep on doing so for the sake of our sisters around the world.

The thing I love about Ruth Rendell is that in addition to having a good who-dun-it, she also explores how British life is changing and what ordinary people think of that. She does that again in this one. I guess I'll concede that she sometimes allows characters to do this in a self-conscious way that might seem a "tad" dated. But her characters aren't supposed to be hip urbanites who wouldn't possibly use a term from the 90s. They're supposed to be small-town police officers who are generally well-meaning, but a bit befuddled by it all. And that comes through. I just get lost her in books and forget the events aren't real. She's wonderful.

I've been pretty hard on Ruth Rendell lately. I miss the startling acid observations in her earlier psychological thrillers and their wicked plot twists. I miss her writing as Barbara Vine, under which she produces her best work. After spending several decades in her company, I think I've gotten greedy and for that I'm sorry.

The worst Ruth Rendell is better than the best of many of her contemporaries (P.D. James excepted) and this above-average Wexford mystery is a very nicely done book. It has a Christie-ish feel to it and that's not a bad thing. In fact, English country murders are a wonderful tradition and I'm glad to see this one come along. It starts and ends with a truffle-sniffing dog, which is an education unto itself, and progresses along a path that takes us into the company and homes of some of the best and worst people you can expect in an English country village. Two bodies, two murders, possibly related but possibly years apart are at the heart of the book and there is an especially tough subplot where Wexford becomes acquainted with female genital mutilation as a cultural practice carried over by African immigrants.

Rendell has done her homework here and does not flinch as she takes on this most difficult of subjects. This isn't a wonderful Rendell but it is a very good read and a genuine education in the process. Sometimes that is plenty enough. And oh, by the way, I just found out that a Barbara Vine book entitled The Birthday Present is due out later this year. Can't wait!

I am a huge fan of Ruth Rendell having read every book and novela she has written. I was eagerly awaiting the release of this new Wexford novel. Although I enjoyed it for there is really no bad Rendell book, in my opinion, it is far from one of her best. That said, I would still buy it because even at her less than best, Rendell is still the best writer out there. In this one, Wexford investigates two old murders and there is a subplot about female circumcision that meanders along. There are no big surprises but a lot of interesting characters as is to be expected from this fine author. If you're a big fan as I am, you will likely get it anyway. The rest should pick up one of her other fine books, especially the early novels and short stories and those written under her pen name, Barbara Vine.

Ruth Rendell published her first murder mystery set in Kingsmarkham in 1964. By my way of reckoning, that's the year the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. Kingsmarkham was a provincial little town where everyone knew everyone else. A couple of books later, Inspector Wexford's daughter Sheila was, I think, a bit of a proto-hippy. Over the years the Wexford series has not only presented good mystery novels but chronicled the growth of Kingsmarkham from a bywater to a sprawling entity which has absorbed former neighboring villages and is itself much closer to London. Assumptions about sexual and family relationships, about economics, about the very landscape have changed, and Wexford has to change with them. The town has also become ethnically diverse. In "Not in the Flesh" Wexford recalls the time when it seemed to him that the only black family in town was his doctor's; now there is enough of a Somali community that Wexford's daughters start an organization opposing "female circumcision" and Wexford becomes involved. He and his family and his colleague Mike Burden have gotten older, though perhaps only a few years for each decade Kingsmarkham has grown--Sheila has a baby daughter now and is still young enough to be cast as a goddess of love in a film. But for me at least part of the pleasure of a Wexford novel is finding out what is new and what is still recognizable in Kingsmarkham.
"Not in the Flesh" directs us, however, to the past, not only in bringing together stories from eight and eleven years earlier but in its setting, a tiny crossroads that feels like a village where everyone's grandfathers knew (and distrusted?) each other. There is the resident novelist (with his two wives) in the ugly Victorian house, the gentry from the big house, the blacksmith's grandson who has gone into the construction business, the couple whose son and his girlfriend live upstairs but commute to London. Gradually the circle expands to include outsiders: seasonal fruit-pickers, a happily married biology teacher with secret ambitions. We glimpse the bizarre possibility of a new life for an old woman who had seemed locked in misery by an old crime. A knife and various wedding rings weave the story together.
OK, I confess it--I figured out the plot well before Wexford did, though not the details of who, where and with what weapon--details that turned out not to be too important, since there was guilt enough and to spare.
At the same time, I loved the experience of the novel, the working out of the intertwining plots, the sad ironies and the moral compromises that modern life imposes on those for whom the truth seemed so simple a few weeks or years or decades ago. Wexford still stumbles a little and must reach for the right words when he goes to explain that what he does, solving a crime and bringing the murderer to justice, is for the good of society. He still suffers, and watches other suffer, when he must decide whether to allow a crime to go forward in order to catch the perpetrators. Nothing is simple or easy, the way it might seem in the sleepy little village with its dozen "suspects," but it is still possible to reconstruct the crime.

I'm more a fan of her non-series books. That doesn't mean I won't read a Wexford novel. I will and I do--generally to my enjoyment.

Unfortunately, this was not one of her best. That said, it still beats the work of many of her contemporaries. Few have as much insight into human character, offer such a plethora of intriguing characters and devise such devilishly complex plots.

The story gets off to a good start when a truffle-hunting dog uncovers the skeletal remains of a man who obviously has been the victim of foul play. That brings Inspector Reg Wexford and his team into play. They're so familiar to us old fans we look forward to seeing them in action again.

Wexford's family gets more involved than usual in this novel. Daughters Sheila, an actress, and Sylvia, a social worker, involve Reg in efforts to save a young Somali girl from the mutilation of female circumcision. Even wife Dora has probably her biggest role since "Road Rage."

This novel is no exception from the norm in the matter of insight and eccentric characters. Perhaps it's the plotting that's a bit off. There's just a bit too much coincidence and--despite red herrings aplenty--it wasn't difficult to identify the culprits.