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25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Elegant Piece of Mystery Fiction, April 29, 2000
This review is from: Some Lie and Some Die (An Inspector Wexford Mystery) (Paperback)
"Some Lie and Some Die" is a superbly crafted mystery novel. It's short--in pages, and in time-line, and it's not overly burdened with plotting or diverting details. It is, in a word, elegant. The events (a murder, a missing girl, a palette of suspects) are set against the backdrop of a rock concert, complete with egotistical stars and fawning sycophants, spoiled fans and irate neighbors. But underlying it all are the basic human failings of self-absorption and greed and it is these motivations which lead to the horror and the desperation of the characters and their actions. Rendell is, as usual, an incisive observer of the dark side of humanity, and a writer who can portray the consequences with the short, deft strokes of a master craftsman.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not one of her better works..., September 5, 2005
This review is from: Some Lie and Some Die (An Inspector Wexford Mystery) (Paperback)
...and possibly her worst. I've read two other SUPERB books, A judgement in Stone and The Babes in the Wood, and Rendell is equally adept at characterizing people and atmosphere. Her books are not very long, and I sometimes wish they were longer, that she would dwell more on her strengths like PD James does, but this one lacked almost everything--characterization, atmosphere, and length. Added to which the plot was quite unbelievable--I was hit on the head constantly with Zeno's power over his fellow human beings, but in the end I did not quite think enough had been done to make me believe this to be true. And the professor in the second house was not developed enough either, especially since he plays a decently strong role in the ending (Bit of a spoiler)--the girl's reasons for meeting the professor were shabby, to the point of being ridiculous (Rendell does try to set it up earlier by introducing this obsession on the part of someone else...but that was not good enough and stuck out very obviously like a plant just to make this shabby ending work.) I think this book lacks attention--it seems to have been put together hastily and without much thought, perhaps to meet a deadline? There are better and really much much better and superb Rendell mysteries--read them, read this for comparision, but not much else.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Did Ruth Rendell really write this?, September 22, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Some Lie and Some Die (An Inspector Wexford Mystery) (Paperback)
Never before has a Rendell novel left me so cold. Totally untypical of its brilliant author, "Some Lie and Some Die" is dull and unsatisfying, and offers little to reward the reader for enduring such tedium. The characters--with a few exceptions--are uninteresting; detection is slow and scarce, and the motive for the murder turns out to be highly improbable. It's as if Rendell wrote a mystery starting with the body but forgot to include a plausible reason for it. Where is the seamless manipulation, the ingenuity, the stunning surprise twists interlaced with brilliant psychological insight, that are the hallmarks of Rendell's work? Not here. The few bright spots are the scenes between Inspector Burden and his son, which show us a humor, an energy missing from the rest of this dead, bleak novel. Let's just toss this one along with "Simisola" into Rendell's "Forget about it" pile.
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