4 Stars
Reading this book was a bittersweet experience for me. It was a joy to read a book by one of my
favourite mystery/suspense writers, but it was sad to think that this is the
last of her novels since Ruth Rendell died earlier this year.
Carl Martin, a young crime novelist, inherits his father’s house and
acquires a tenant, Dermot McKinnon, to give him extra income as he struggles
with writing his second novel. Carl also
inherits his dad’s collection of alternative, herbal, and homeopathic remedies
and he sells some diet pills to a friend Stacey, an actress struggling with
weight gain. Stacey dies because of
those pills. Dermot knows that Carl sold
them to her, and he sets out to blackmail Carl:
refusing to pay rent and threatening to tell the newspapers about Carl’s
involvement in Stacey’s death. Carl’s
life soon spirals out of control.
There are two subplots as well:
the adventures of Tom Milsom as he explores London using his free
seniors’ bus pass, and the petty crimes of his amoral daughter Lizzie who, her
father admits, is prone to constant “lying, exaggeration, or fantasizing.”
Usually in a Rendell mystery, plots will converge seamlessly. That is not the case here. Tom’s adventures and Lizzie’s exploits are
only tangentially related to Carl’s story.
Had Rendell lived to revise and edit, I suspect the narrative threads would
have been tightened so they would not seem so meandering and unconnected.
What is explored so well is how everyone has dark corners in his/her
mind and how ordinary people can step out of dark corners to commit criminal
acts. Carl’s need for respect causes him
to take actions of which he does not initially seem capable: “he realized again what he dreaded most in
Dermot’s threats. It wasn’t the loss of
income. It was the humiliation he
feared. He couldn’t live with the
shame.” Lizzie is motivated by a need to
feel powerful: “Doing [petty thievery] –
and she often did it – gave her a sense of power.” Dermot has a similar need: “No one had ever been afraid of Dermot
before, or not to this degree, and it gratified him to have caused someone this
amount of fear without violence or even the threat of it.”
The book also examines how guilt can destroy a person. In its portrayal of psychological
disintegration, the novel is masterful. Carl’s
first act of selling dangerous diet pills to Stacey is not an illegal act,
merely a careless one. He does however
feel guilty and so Dermot’s threats of exposure are effective against him. A girlfriend describes the impact of guilt on
Carl: “He hardly speaks but to rage
against Dermot. He sleeps a little,
dreams violently, cries out, and sits up fighting against something that isn’t
there.” Gradually paranoia takes over
his life. When one character suggests
being too frightened to ever confess to a crime like murder, another responds,
“’It wouldn’t be as scary as not confessing.
It might even be a comfort. Think
what it must have been like to have it on [one’s] conscience.’”
The effectiveness of Rendell’s character development is shown by the
novel’s impact on the reader. Readers
understand Carl so well that they will want him to go unpunished while at the
same time desire some justice. Readers
will also be left with a feeling of “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
There are some plot weaknesses but the depth of its psychological
analysis, characterization, and thematic development make this a must-read for
lovers of suspense books.
Note: I received an ARC of this
book from the publisher via NetGalley.
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