I discovered Ruth Rendell through an audio book copy of The Bridesmaid. The flawed and struggling characters grabbed me from the first page. Watching their small but fatally mistaken choices, following their obsessive but sensible thoughts made for one of the most thrilling and insightful novels I’d read. I immediately began gobbling up her books.
Although I read one or two Inspector Wexford novels, I wasn’t as interested in the solution to crimes as I was to the events leading up to them and the “why” of how it all played out.
Other favorites are: The Killing Doll, A Sight for Sore Eyes, and Live Flesh.
In this lengthy interview with Ruth Rendell in The Telegraph, Ms. Rendell says, “I do empathise with people who are driven by dreadful impulses.” The interview also notes that she’s often said, “…she doesn’t think any families are ever happy and that the world is an amoral place.” — April 2005.
“She understands oddity, but not to the exclusion of how ordinary people function.” — Val McDermid, discussing Ruth Rendell’s trail-blazing with her approach to psychological suspense fiction. The Guardian, “Dark lady of whodunnits”, August 2002. (Although I would add, I love Rendell’s fiction because she focuses on the “whydunnit” rather than the “whodunnit”.)
