Sun 6 Sep 2015
A Review by Barry Gardner: RUTH RENDELL – Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
RUTH RENDELL – Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter. Inspector Wexford #15. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1992. Mysterious Press, US, hardcover, 1992; paperback, 1993.
Well, this is it. No more will Mike (Byrden) turn to Reg (Wexford) with a look of bewilderment and/or irritation. At least I’ve seen ger (Rendell[ quoted as saying it’s probably the kast, but these things aren’t chiseled in stone.
The book opens with one of Wexford’s minions, off-duty and taking care of personal business, being fatally shot in a bank robbery. The criminals are not apprehended. Several months later and not too far away, a aged and prominent writer, her husband, and her daughter are killed, and her granddaughter badly wounded, by intruders. Are the crimes connected? What do you think? How? Ah, therein lies the story.
As always, Rendell’s focus is on people rather than clues, and she creates a satisfying group of none-too-attractive ones here with her skewer-like pen. At one point I was ready to indict her for snobbery because of the unremitting unsavoriness of her lower-class characters, and then I realized that no, it’s not just them; just about all of these people are unpleasant (Including Wexford’s actress daughter, but that’s nothing new; she’s been an ass for as long as we‘ve known her).
On my more optimistic days I suspect that Rendell is a misanthrope; mostly I fear she is an accurate observer of the human condition.
Though she is an excellent writer, I am not a real Rendell fan (under either name) apart from the Wexford books; primarily, I expect, because I do not care for the people about whom she writes, or the situations in which she places them.
And really, this is not the best Wexford. I began to suspect much of the outcome far too early, and found the resolution of Wexford’s problems with his besotted daughter(she is such a twit) far too pat Still. even a mediocre Wexford book beats a lot of the tripe being published and shouldn’t be missed — particularly if there are to be no more. Recommended.
Editorial Update: Barry was not to know, but this was not the last the world saw of Inspector Wexford. I do not know how reliable the rumors were at the time, but the sixteenth in the series, Simisola, came out two years later, followed by eight more. No Man’s Nightingale (2013) is, however, all but certain to be the last. Ms Rendell died earlier this year at the age of 85.
September 7th, 2015 at 12:06 am
I think Barry has a point about Rendell’s misanthropy as a writer. I prefer her non Wexford books as Rendell and Vine, but only in small doses. She does write about not particularly nice people making bad choices quite a bit. One or two Rendell’s or Vine’s a year is all I could handle so my backlog grew fairly quickly.
That misanthropy resembled Patricia Highsmith a bit, but somehow Highsmith’s was always easier to take for me.
I will say this for Wexford though, George Baker, who played the role on television was ideally cast in the part.
September 7th, 2015 at 8:59 am
Barry summed up my feelings about Ruth Rendell as well as his in his next-to-last paragraph. I read and enjoyed the early Wexford’s, but reading one of her non-series books, well before Barbara Vine came along, that was it for me as far as reading more of her work, Wexford or not. I admired her writing ability, but her choice of subject matter did not interest me.
September 11th, 2015 at 8:53 am
I’ve read over a dozen Ruth Rendell’s novels and a dozen more of her “Barbara Vine” books. I had a chance to speak with Rendell briefly at a BOUCHERCON when she was signing books. She was very smart.
March 8th, 2022 at 7:51 pm
I’ve been a long-standing fan of Rendell’s work, both the Wexford novels and her other books which explore the unpleasantness of the characters that inhabit her works – people that are intensely selfish, stupid, manipulative, nasty and weak-minded. These books are excellent in their plots and portray a general pattern of those who use, those who are used, those who abuse and the abused.
As others have opined, there is a very strong streak of misanthropy in Rendell’s work, particularly the books that do not feature Inspector Wexford. But I find that these deeply unpleasant characters – driven by greed, naivety, self-interest, psychopathy and hurting others draws the reader in hook, line and sinker and that is the genius behind her often brilliant work.