by Ruth Rendell
Miss Rendell is one of my favorite mystery/thriller/suspense writers. I don't care that much for her police procedurals, I can't even remember the name of her chief police protagonist---wait, Adam Dagliesh? or is that P. D. James? Another British author with a dyspeptic view of the human condition.
I think that I like Miss Rendell's Barbara Vine novels the best. The psychological messes that her characters manage to tangle themselves into are compelling to me. But I don't think that Miss Rendell has written many of them lately. Or I haven't come across them.
Miss Rendell has a deep appreciation of and amusement with the hypocrisies of human nature. There are no "good" characters and there are no "bad" characters. The "good" character or sister in this tale is self absorbed (she thinks that her sister murdered their stepfather who sexually abused her because of her, she never even considers her younger sister's sexual peril). The "good" sister has never turned in her sister for the stepfather's murder because blood is thicker than water, although the "good" sister has felt guilty about it. The "good" sister is also involved in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend and later fiancee. The "good" sister just loves abuse.
The "bad" sister is happily married and appears to have the most healthy life and marriage. The murder of her abusive stepfather has appeared to have freed her psychologically and emotionally. But you can never be sure with a Rendell character, they are most often seen through the eyes of another character and none of her characters see themselves or others too clearly.
The policeman in this story marries a woman who cares for older people out of the greed in her heart. She ingratiates herself into their lives and wills and then puts them out of their lives to relieve her own penury misery. She also blackmails the "good" sister with her "bad" sister's actions. The blackmail is not caught by the law or justice (in the sense of the Law of society), but she is sentenced to a married life with her retired policeman husband and her scope for bad action is severely limited. And the reader does not believe that that is a happy ending for her nor does she.
Miss Rendell's characters may not get their Lawfully Just deserts, but they do have to take the consequences of their actions, good or bad, well or ill intentioned. It is like learning the Mean Girl in high school has taken to cleaning the homes of the high earning, talented Freaks from high school whom she regulated to the Locker Room Sock Pile.
"C'est la vie," says Miss Rendell, "It goes to show that you never can tell." And those unexpected turns in life and crime are what makes Miss Rendell such a good read for me.
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