I read a couple of Ruth Rendell / Barbara Vine novels a few years ago (The crocodile bird and The chimney sweeper’s boy) and I remember enjoying them. I’d like to try another, but she has written so many books, I don’t know where to start. Does anyone else like her books? Which are the best in your opinion?
ETA : I’m thinking of the novels outside of the Detective Wexford books. I know those are a series and am planning to start reading those consecutively.
Sent you a email with some suggestions. (It was too big to copy and paste and had more information than I felt comfortable simply omitting.)
I love her work. Haven’t read it in a while but I went through a phase where I was totally into her (and P.D. James as well).
Of Barbara Vine, I loved No Night is Too Long, Anna’s Book, Fatal Inversion, a Dark Adapted Eye. I also felt that, generally, her Barbara Vine books tended to be a bit darker than the ones she put out under her regular name, though they were all good. I’m not sure why. If given the choice, I’d choose a Vine book, though. They felt very different. Agree that the Crocodile Bird was great. In general, her more recent ones, I didn’t love. I liked Adam and Eve and Pinch Me but didn’t LOVE it.
Of her books published under her own name, apart from Wexford, let’s see…those aren’t really jumping out at me, though I loved Tree of Hands. Sight for Sore Eyes was good the first time but when I reread it I didn’t love it as much.
It’s pretty hard to go wrong. I wasn’t able to read Live Flesh, though.
I especially recommend The Water’s Lovely, The Rottweiler, 13 Steps Down, *End in Tears *(all Rendell), and *The House of Stairs *(Vine). I have read some Wexford as well, but as you say, she has written so many.
I read all her stuff and really like the Wexford series. I do recall being quite astounded by A Fatal Inversion, though. One of her best.
I love her Wexford series. I listened to them on Audiobook. I never have read much else of hers though. I probably should remedy that.
I did read and like A Dark Adapted Eye, and also liked the movie adaptation with Helena Bonham Carter.
Does anyone know why she chose to write under two different names? Elizabeth Peters did this as well. It always confused me.
The Barbara Vine ones have a Gothic feel while the others, at least initially, were more true mysteries. I heard this on NPR years ago.
Yes, I read somewhere that those written as Barbara Vine are suppose to be more psychological, while the Ruth Rendell ones are more traditional mysteries.
Hi, I’ve read everything by Rendell and years ago I read a story where the lead female character began an affair with a married man. The man was addicted to being in love and after the newness of each relationship wore off, he would dump the women. It’s not much info but does anyone know the name of this book?
Thanks!
She’s from my neck of the woods and I love the reason why she was fired from her job as a journalist.
From wikipedia: She was fired after writing an article on the local Tennis Club’s annual dinner, which she had not actually attended, thereby missing the untimely death of the after-dinner speaker mid-speech.
If she wrote that into a novel no-one would believe it.
I love her. I think I’ve read every Wexford novel and love the transformation of the characters. ‘Fatal Inversion’ was my first intro to the ‘Vine’ novels but I try not to miss any.
She has a new one coming up this fall entitled the Vault. Wexford is retired but still comes across a mystery to solve.
She has an even newer one that came out like a week ago! Tigerlily’s Orchids. God bless her, still cranking them out! I got kind of turned off the last few years because she was just getting too kinky and grotesque with her characters. I’m looking forward to the Wexford in the fall. She’s written so many books, all of them just excellent, that I might start at the beginning and work my way up to the present…
I just finished Tigerlily’s Orchids yesterday. It was not kinky or grotesque. It put me in mind of one of Maeve Binchy’s or Alexander McCall Smith’s books, where you have a big cast of characters whose lives all intersect, except where in Binchy’s books they all fall in love and drink tea, in this one they end up on slabs at the morgue. About a third of the characters are completely innocent, a third are busybodies, and a third are sleazeballs. There’s “only” one murder and no splatter or gore. The value is in the quality of her writing. She’s just brilliant in sucking you in.