From Doon With Death: A Wexford Case - 50th Anniversary Edition (Wexford, 1)

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Parsons led an extremely uneventful life, being a lay preacher, but Inspector Wexford is intrigued when he is looking through her belongings and fine a number of expensive antique books all inscribed 'From. I've just reread this novel again after six years, and while I wouldn't change my rating, I will say that it was definitely a pleasure to have taken it up again.

Among the clues that Inspector Wexford will have to work with are a tube of lipstick in an unusual shade and a set of books with messages all inscribed with notes to Minna from Doon. And yet, it is fairly easy to guess who the murderer is (although, it probably wasn't the case when it was first published). For some reason I had never read the Wexford novels before and it is a good beginning to the series. From what I can tell, this is not only the first book in Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford series, but also her first published novel. The plot is a decent one, it's intriguing enough, but I have issue with the characterisation of people, I know it's the early nineties, but I have no recollection of people being to purist and straight laced.How is it possible that a woman who had led such a quiet, respectable, unspectacular life could have met such a death of passion and violence? As Rendell explains in her Afterword, From Doon with Death was originally written as a one-off standalone.

The Wexford soundtrack was composed, performed, arranged and produced by Brian Bennett at Honeyhill Studios in Hertfordshire. Unusually, Rendell does not make any of the characters particularly sympathetic and that adds to the reality of the crime and suspects. Read them and tell me they don’t add affects that would be hard to narrate without sounding like propaganda. Update, May 6, 2015: I am undertaking a Ruth Rendell "key" works project -- the books The Guardian recently noted as such the day of Ruth Rendell's death. Margaret Parsons was a shy, unexceptional woman who lived a Spartan existence with her dour husband in a decrepit Victorian house.

I only ever read a few of Ruth Rendell's (aka Barbara Vine's) books at the time they were first published, but I remember the Inspector Wexford TV series fondly and thought that I'd start a Rendell binge for 2023.