It happened with Dick Francis, Ross Macdonald, and many others: a
superb, underrated suspense writer finally achieves some wider
recognition. . . just when he or she is producing weaker work. And
now that seems to be the case with Ruth Rendell: this new
non-detective, psycho-crime novel is a book club selection - but
it's far less impressive than Rendell's recent work in either
detection (Death Notes, A Sleeping Life) or crime (Make Death Love
Me, A Judgement in Stone). Someone is killing young blonde women on
the moors near Hilderbridge. And all evidence points the reader to
central character Stephen Walby, 30 - an obviously disturbed fellow
who finds the first body. After all, Stephen is puritanical,
impotent (though wed to nice Lyn), obsessed with the moor (he
believes himself to be the illegitimate grandson of a famed moor
novelist), and was long ago deserted by a blonde mother; also, he
secretly locates the killer's lair - in a cave on the moor. Is
Stephen himself the schizoid killer, then? Or are there two psychos
wandering around the moor? Plus - things get even more complicated
when Stephen clearly does kill blonde wife Lyn (who's been
understandably unfaithful) and tries to pass off the murder as one
of the moor killings. . . until Lyn then turns up alive (!). How
can this be? Well, Rendell uses one of the creakiest of ancient,
implausible plot-twists to explain Lyn's survival. And the
denouement - when Stephen comes face to face with the killer in the
cave-lair - will surprise no reasonably alert reader. So, despite
Rendell's ever-sharp prose and the effective moor/village
atmosphere, this is thin, contrived psycho-crime storytelling -
without the ironic inventiveness or the psychological conviction of
A Judgement in Stone (or even The Lake of Darkness); and it would
be a pity if newcomers to Rendell got their first impression of her
from this distinctly under-par effort. (Kirkus Reviews)
The Vangmoor was a dark, forbidding place. One victim had been found there with her face disfigured and her hair shorn close to the scalp. Then a second woman disappeared on the moor, and a sense of dread gripped the 50 local men who searched for her. Someone was watching; was it the killer?
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