Title: Murder Being Once Done (Inspector Wexford #7)
Author: Ruth Rendell
Published: 1972
Category: Mystery – Police Procedural
Rating: 3½ out of 5
Add: Goodreads
Purchase: Amazon | IndieBound | Book Depository
On doctor’s orders, Wexford is supposed to be resting. But he can’t resist taking a peek into the investigation of a macabre crime.
In a vast, gloomy, overgrown London cemetery, a girl is found murdered. A girl with a name that isn’t here, and little else that is. A girl with no friends, no possessions and no past.
Chief Inspector Wexford has been sent to London by his doctor for a rest — no late nights, no rich food, no alcohol, and above all, no criminal investigation. To add insult to injury, it is Wexford’s own nephew, Howard, who is leading the investigation into the macabre mystery. And even though Howard and his subordinates might think he’s out of his league, and even though his doctor wouldn’t approve, Wexford can’t resist just taking a look at things for himself.
I love Rendell’s titles. Murder Being Once Done sounds so sober, implies that the murder is not the end, that there are consequences, that actions follow.
Wexford is not one for forced inactivity. All the sympathy and strict meals and the feeling of being overly watched by his wife and his nephew’s wife is too much. After some misunderstanding, Howard invites him into the investigation fo the murder of a young woman whose body is found in a cemetery vault. Wexford is out of his comfort zone and still feeling a little shook up by his recent medical issue. He’s not as sure of himself here as he usually is, not as confident. And he’s not treated with the same deference he is in his own town. It’s a different look at the detective, but in the end after a misstep or two, his intuition and perseverance get them to the killer, even though it’s a twisty road.
If I have one complaint about this book, it’s the identity of the killer. In most mysteries, the killer is one of the at least semi-major characters. Here’s that’s not so much the case. On the other hand, there are plenty of suspects and at least one with a reasonable motive and I really thought I knew who the killer was, until I was totally wrong.
I listen to this on audio and the narrator, Robin Bailey, does a good job. I enjoy listening, and I think I would also enjoy reading them in print. I like the descriptions and just her writing style in general.
This book also deals some with the adoption process in London in the 70s. I think that this time around the commentary on current social issues worked well within the story. It was a sidelight, and didn’t overwhelm the plot or the investigation.
Chief Inspector Wexford Series
- From Doon with Death
- A New Lease of Death (apa: Sins of the Fathers)
- Wolf to the Slaughter
- The Best Man To Die
- A Guilty Thing Surprised
- No More Dying Then
- Murder Being Once Done
- Some Lie and Some Die
- Shake Hands Forever
- A Sleeping Life
- Put on by Cunning (apa: Death Notes)
- The Speaker of Mandarin
- An Unkindness of Ravens
- The Veiled One
- Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter
- Simisola
- Road Rage
- Harm Done
- The Babes in the Wood
- End in Tears
- Not in the Flesh
- The Monster in the Box
- The Vault
Short Stories
- Means of Evil and Other Stories
Challenge: WAYR
About Ruth Rendell
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE (February 17, 1930 – May 2, 2015) was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.
Rendell’s best-known creation, Chief Inspector Wexford, was the hero of many popular police stories, some of them successfully adapted for TV. But Rendell also generated a separate brand of crime fiction that deeply explored the psychological background of criminals and their victims, many of them mentally afflicted or otherwise socially isolated. This theme was developed further in a third series of novels, written under her pseudonym Barbara Vine.
Wow, if I were to start all of these I would read for years
Now I want to read a Rendell myself 🙂
I don’t like it when a minor character commits the crime – I like to have a chance to guess whodunit.
Me too, even though I rarely actually do guess.
Still haven’t read Rendell. I like it when I guess wrong 🙂
Sorry I didn’t comment on this sooner. I know I meant to. I love this series although as I read them now I find them slower paced than most mysteries. I want to read the ones from the 90’s because I think I missed them, then go back and reread up to that point. Someday.