Synopsis: A long ago summer idyll at a manor-turned-commune ended in tragedy, and the recent discovery of the bones of a woman and a baby threaten the secrets carefully guarded by the young man who inherited the home. Review: It may be a lesser Barbara Vine, but A Fatal Inversion is still an above average read.
Synopsis: Trapped in a coffin, popular teen Cass McBride works to find a strategy to reach freedom, even as the police trace down dead lead after dead lead.
Synopsis: After a supremely sheltered childhood, a young woman finds herself without her mother for the first time in her life, and tells her new lover the story of the crime that led to her emancipation.
Synopsis: After she befriends secretive An-Ling, a menopausal wife and mother’s family collapses under the weight of a lifetime of lies that may have lead to An-Ling’s murder.
Synopsis: A woman haunted by the uncertain onset of a genetic disease sees a woman from her past, and struggles to fill in the gaps between truth and lies from a time in her life marked by violence and murder. Review: House of Stairs is yet another knockout from Barbara Vine, the British crime writer who pens the Inspector Wexford mysteries as Ruth Rendell. The tease here is that Vine isn’t going to reveal the identity of the murder victim until the final pages, and…
Synopsis: Entranced by the folk tales of an old mountain man, and repulsed by the same man’s grisly crimes, Redmond Hatch struggles to narrate the events which led him to bring his beloved wife and daughter to winterwood. Review: I was upset by the way Winterwood seduced me. I did not want to be reeled in by Redmond and his elliptical storytelling because I knew that, between the lines, he was telling me stories I didn’t want him to be able to tell. I wanted…
Synopsis: After the death of the tortured aunt who edited her grandmother’s best-selling diaries, a second-generation Danish-British woman seeks to find out the truth of her aunt’s parentage, which may be linked to an infamous murder case. Review: The complexity of Anna’s Book (originally published as Asta’s Book) is reminiscent of A Dark-Adapted Eye, and both books are now tied as my favorite of the books crime novelist Ruth Rendell has written as Barbara Vine. Both books deal with a tangled family history as revealed…
Synopsis: An illiterate housekeeper’s resentment of the privileged family she serves boils over into a murderous rage. Review: Judgement in Stone was turned into an incredible movie called La Ceremonie by Claude Chabrol, starring Sandrine Bonnaire as Eunice, the “stone” of the title, and the marvelous Isabelle Huppert as Joan, the local postmistress who fans the flames of Eunice’s anger. This is yet another case of a film adaptation that is truthful to the book, but that can also stand on its own.
Synopsis: An elderly woman’s recollections of a love that ended in tragedy shed new light on a married woman’s illicit affair. Review: Wordpress keeps eating this review, and I don’t have the energy to write it a third time. Suffice it to say that it’s very good, with great characters, wonderful postwar detail, and a riveting story. Meanwhile, check out Sheila for a nice post about Margaret Atwood.
Synopsis: A suicidal teen is rescued by a charismatic drifter with designs on a woman he calls “The Princess.” Review: Gallowglass has not been my favorite Vine (the alter ego of crime writer Ruth Rendell), but subpar Vine is still head and shoulders above most of what’s out there in the mystery genre. Where Vine succeeds best in this book is in depicting Joe’s thralldom to Sandor, the man who rescued him from jumping front of a train. An orphan raised by loveless foster parents,…