Author: Ruth Rendell

Title: Not in the Flesh (Inspector Wexford #21) Author: Ruth Rendell Read by: Simon Vance Category: Mystery- Police Procedural Audio published: June 10, 2010 by Random House Audio (First published: January 1, 2007) Rating: 3½ out of 5 stars Add: Goodreads Purchase: Amazon | IndieBound | Book Depository When the truffle-hunting dog starts to dig furiously, his master’s first reaction is delight at the size of the clump the dog has unearthed: at the going rate, this one truffle might be worth several hundred pounds. Then the dirt falls away to reveal not a precious mushroom but the bones and tendons of what is clearly a human hand. In Not in the Flesh, Chief Inspector Wexford tries to piece together events that took place eleven years earlier, a time when someone was secretly interred in a secluded patch of English countryside. Now Wexford and his team will need to interrogate everyone who lives nearby to see if they can turn up a match for the dead man among the...

Title: Wolf to the Slaughter (Inspector Wexford #3) Author: Ruth Rendell Category: Mystery - Police Procedural Published: 1967 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Add: Goodreads Purchase: Amazon | IndieBound | Book Depository Anita Margolis has vanished. Dark and exquisite, Anita's character is as mysterious as her disappearance. But with no body and no apparent crime, seemingly there's nothing to be investigated. Until Wexford receives an anonymous note claiming "a girl called Ann" was killed the very night Anita disappeared. But how seriously should they take the note? With only one questionable lead to follow, Wexford and Inspector Burden are compelled to make enquiries. They soon discover Anita is wealthy, flighty, and thoroughly immoral. Burden has a very clear idea of what has happened to her. But Wexford has his own suspicions. There's no body - and I mean for the majority of the book which is unusual for a murder mystery. But clearly someone has been killed, nothing else could leave that large a blood stain on the carpet of...

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...

Title: An Unkindness of Ravens (Inspector Wexford #13) Author: Ruth Rendell Published: 1985 Category: Mystery - Police Procedural Rating 3 out of 5 Add: Goodreads Purchase: Amazon | IndieBound | Book Depository Ravens are not particularly predatory birds, but neither are they soft and submissive. The collective noun for them is an "unkindness"...The raven is a symbol used by a feminist group whose attitude to the opposite sex is anything but soft and submissive. Detective Chief Inspector Wexford thought he was only doing a neighbourly good deed when he agreed to talk to Joy Williams about her missing husband. He didn't expect to be investigating a homicide... I actually hadn't known that a group of ravens can be called an unkindness. It was my trivia for the day I started listening to An Unkindness of Ravens. I've listened to and enjoyed a couple of others in this series and just picked this one up because my library had it available on audio. And maybe the title struck me. Rodney Williams, the...

Last week I talked about some new-to-me authors that I really enjoyed in 2012. If I had finished Some Lie and Some Die by Ruth Rendell before I made that list, she would definitely have been on it. I read my first book by her, A New Lease of Death, earlier this year, but was a little disappointed in it, mostly because her series character, Chief Inspector Wexford, only played a minor part in it. This was definitely a more fulfilling mystery, although I have the feeling it's still not her best. Some Lie and Some Die was first published in 1973 and revolves around a rock festival and one of its headliners, so some of the "hip" language is dated, but the concepts and insights aren't. Just as the festival is beginning to break up and folks are starting to head in their various directions, a woman's body is found in a nearby quarry. Contrary to the initial speculation, she...