Unlock Now The Monster In The Box (Inspector Wexford, #22) Put Together By Ruth Rendell Published As Digital Copy
I like Rendell, I like Wexford, I like the class and race awareness that she sprinkles throughout her books often with considerable humor.
Cons: this book feels like coming in midway through conversation, not just because it's part of a series, but the way she introduces this apparently longstanding character in Wexford life.
It took a bit of getting used to, The ending wasn't quite what I expected, and the Afterwards seems illconceived,
But as always I never seem to regret a Rendell read, "Some years before, when his daughter Sylvia had been taking a course in psychotherapeutic counselling, she had taught him about the 'box' as a means of dealing with anxieties.
"'If you've a problem weighing on your mind, Dad, you have to visualize a box maybe quite small, the size of a matchbox.
You open it and put your worry inside now don't start laughing, It works. Close the box with the worry inside and put it away somewhere, inside a drawer, say, '
"'Why not throw it in the sea'
"'That's a bit final, You may want to take it out again one day, '
"'And this is going to take all problems away'
"'I don't say that, Dad, but it might help.
If you find yourself thinking of the worry, you also think it's locked away in the box so you can't touch it.
'
"He had scoffed. But still he tried it, Several times since then he had put Targo the suspected serial killer in a box, and sometimes it had worked well.
He tried it again now, carefully placing Targo and the white van and, . . his own fear into the box and hiding it in a drawer of the desk in his office, And the white van failed to reappear, " pp.It has been so long since I read a Ruth Rendell novel, I cannot remember which I read, Recently, I have finished several Barbara Vine mysteries and had fallen under her spell, After reading "The Monster in the Box", I had the surprising sense that I was comparing two different authors!Perhaps it is not fair to do so with this one book.
Vine's writing seems to have a more heightened tension throughout, with the constant mental question,"where are we going with this" Each of her characters seem to possess some emotional baggage and quirkiness, adding to the mystifying aura of the tale.
In Rendell's "Monster", we see several people with more "normal" problems,the dilemmas of immigrant families and one odd, chilling, possible serial killer.
The protagonist, Inspector Wexford, who is familiar to many readers afterbooks in this series, traces his history with this man through many years.
This police procedural is certainly not an "edge of the seat", gripping mystery but Rendell's intricate prose captures one's interest throughout.
She has clearly defined her characters, imbuing them with behavioral traits which are
compelling, endearing or enigmatic, The English countryside and the urban areas are deftly and interestingly painted throughout,
Rendell has managed to sustain suspense to the very last page and has provided me with an enjoyable experience.
The Monster in the Box takes Chief Inspector Wexford back to his days as a young policeman, and to the man he has long suspected of murderserial murder.
Outside the house where Wexford investigated his first murder casea woman found strangled in her bedroomhe noticed a short, muscular man wearing a scarf and walking a dog.
He gave Wexford an unnerving stare, Without any solid evidence, Wexford began to suspect that this manEric Targo, he learnedwas the killer,
Over the years there are more unsolved, apparently motiveless murders in the town of Kingsmarkham, and Wexford continues to quietly suspect that the increasingly prosperous Targovan driver, property developer, kennel owner, and animal loveris behind them.
Now, half a lifetime later, Wexford spots Targo back in Kingsmarkham after a long absence, Wexford tells his longtime partner, Mike Burden, about his suspicions, but Burden dismisses them as fantasy, Meanwhile, Burdens wife, Jenny, has suspicions of her own, She believes that the Rahmans, a highly respectable immigrant family from Pakistan, may be forcing their daughter, Tamima, into an arranged marriageor worse.
In The Monster in the Box, the twenty second book in the Chief Inspector Wexford series, fans will be thrilled to meet the nowaging inspector in the robust early days of his career.
For new readers, no introduction to this spectacular writer and compelling
protagonist could be finer, The Monster in the Box by Ruth Rendell,
This particular Inspector Wexford novel had me from the moment the first sentence was spoken, A tale of obsession and murder,
The obsession lies with Wexford, This first murder case for Inspector Wexford, a bobby fresh off patrolling the streets, was a most baffling one.
It was one that he was never able to bring to a final ending, The murder of a woman found in her own bedroom remained unsolved to this day, But there was something or someone else that stayed with Wexford, He had observed a rather stocky man wearing a scarf and walking his dog just alongside that woman's home at the time of the murder.
It was the intense glare that very man cast at Wexford that made it all the more impossible to forget.
Eric Targo had lived in Kingsmarkham years ago and now suddenly he was back,
This was in my opinion one of the best Inspector Wexford mysteries, It was indeed a tale of obsession and murder, I know Ruth Rendell is a good writer, She must be because so many people enjoy her books, I read in a review somewhere or other that Reg Wexford was the most real of all the fictional detectives, and that's probably true.
But he is so DULL, He doesn't have any bad habits except a desire to indulge in things that might not be good for him red wine, nuts and snacks which he dutifully tries to resist to please his dreary wife.
Quirky detectives like Jackson Brodie, ones who sleep with unsuitable men Jane Tennant or drink too much Morse may not be real, but they are interesting and sometimes fun.
I don't see how anyone involved in solving crimes like murder can be boring, but Wexford is boring, It's probably apt then that the actor that played him on TV was also dull as ditchwater, so it's a shame that the person reading this book Nigel Anthony adopts a George Bakerlike accent for Wexford.
I would have liked to hear an alternative, it would have been a bit of an adventure,
The plot of this is competently enough handled, but there is far too much nostalgia for my liking.
Wexford is constantly reminding us of what it was like in 'the old days' compared to what it is like at the time the novel is set in.
It's all a bit of a cliché no sex before marriage, no divorce, no internet etc all harking back to a time that was even more dull than the present.
Added to this is an endless retelling of Wexford's personal love life, an unexciting history of getting engaged to a girl he didn't like and being too decent to break it off until he did, a brief entanglement with a woman and a rape scam, then meeting his wifetobe, who was actually on holiday with her parents and Wexford with his mother.
This man has really lived!
As if Wexford's drab existence, banal personal history and stodgy personality weren't enough, he got no satisfaction from the resolution of this case.
Nor did I,
Of the two personae of this author, I much prefer the Barbara Vine novels, several of which I have really enjoyed.
This particular Ruth Rendell novel passed the time, but so does watching paint dry,
As a writer, Ruth Rendell has always been hit or miss for me, I thought that at least two of her earlier novels, A Judgment in Stone and A DarkAdapted Eye, were brilliant.
But some of her later books, especially the ones focusing on really disturbing people and situations like Portobello left me cold.
But I always liked her Wexford series, especially since Wexford is refreshingly free of the eccentricities or painful conundrums which infect the lives of other fictional crimesolvers like Rebus or Adam Dalgleish.
Wexford likes his life. He is happily married and fond of his daughters, though one of them has been a source of worry to him for years.
He even gets along with his prickly sidekick Mike Burden, This novel which is one of Rendell's last is good though I found it to be a bit rambling in parts.
In her later years Rendell took to satirizing the foolishness of the postmodern era,especially the excessive political correctness she felt permeated British life.
Not that she let the past off the hook, . what good mystery writer would In this story we get a lot of the backstory of Wexford's youth and again comparisons between the follies of the past and present.
And we learn that Wexford like Sherlock Holmes has his own nemesis, a man who for years has been able to kill those he sees as
inconvenient, people who stand in the way of the happiness of others, and get away with it.
A good read.
I have read quite a few of Rendell's mysteries, and I find that some are just not my cup of tea.
This one started out great with a creepilydrawn stalker, I liked the relationship among the police officers, too, The title refers to being able to mentally put something that is bothering you "into a box" and file it away so it no longer will bother you.
Hmmm. That doesn't work when the monster is a murderer,
Uvijek mi je zanimljivo kad pisci, a pogotovo renomirani“ pisci kao što je bila Ruth Rendell ne obave svoj posao oko istraživanja mjesta izvan njihove države ili imena stranaca.
Zar je tako teško bilo uguglati: Uobičajena muslimanska imena u Bosni i Hercegovini
E, da Knjiga je meh
Does not age well, tho only written I think in.
Plot lacks suspense and narrative tension, There are also two incredibly annoying g and intrusive female characters who are preoccupied with the potential of an Islamic family arranging a marriage foryear old daughter.
On of the women is her teacher, the other a cop both of them basically stalk the family, I think "showing concern" for how Britain's police force deals with the customs of immigrants that are in opposition to British traditions is Rendell's point, but her approach is racist ,hamhanded and unbelievable.
Last book ofis a dud, Hopingreading is a lot more entertaining, Enough said. I may not even attempt any more Ruth Rendell books, Having once been a fan, I found that lately I can barely finish her works, I find the Inspector Wexford novels especially wordy and nonsuspensful, I know that her way is to build up to the ending with a a psychologically intense look at the characters.
But I found this book exeptionally boring, and I was itching to be done with it, A good read, but I wasnt overly fond of all the flashbacks, I picked this up in the hope of reading something silly,
Meh.
The reason to read this would be of you were reading the whole series and had an interest in the development of the characters, in this case a lot of space is given over to Wexford's girlfriends and search for a wife.
The actual policing and investigation side of the novel is a bit curious, From the first Wexford knows who the criminal is, The problem is, he can't link him to any crime, However since their eyes met across a not at all crowded street Wexford knows that the suspect is a criminal and that he knows that Wexford knows that he is.
This isn't a spoiler it's page one stuff and on the back cover, As it happens this meeting occurred in the past, the novel was published in, was set in thes with Wexford narrating or recalling incidents from the beginning of his career possibly the early to mids.
Since later we learn that Watford has a nephew in the Met the Metropolitan police who cover London the question is why didn't Wexford just fabricate some evidence and get the guy put away Then I recalled that Ruth Rendell sat in the House of Lords as a Labour Peer as I was to do several times while reading so perhaps she had some personal stake in projecting an image of the moral integrity of the state.
Though a modern version of this story taking into account various recent and ongoing cases might well have developed a fabricated evidence strand of the plot.
Instead she does something interesting and has Wexford believe that he is being stalled by the criminal, This kind of situation is generally coded as female and we have a notion of victimhood and vulnerability attached to someone who would have been quite powerful and has authority in society.
Perhaps this served simply to suggest that the powerful are also at risk Or indeed that as a young policeman Wexford was not very confident and did not feel that he was much supported by his peers or superiors
In the end everything is wrapped up in an unsatisfactory way but with decent foreshadowing so I can't complain too much.
In terms of filming for TV, a lot of the story consists of men sitting together drinking red wine which is cheap to film but not exactly visually engaging.
Is this the author at war with her agent, trying to make it impossible to sell for TV rights There is also a lion in the story , but surprisingly no trip to Sweden, not any of the staple of current police dramas hours of searching cctv footage.
The question of whether there is anything homosexual in Wexford's obsession with this criminal whose powerful physique is stressed throughout is raised and then dismissed.
No nothing homoerotic here at all, writes the policeman in his notebook, To underline this Rendell intercuts the lingering glances of the two men with Wexford's chain of unsuccessful heterosexual relationships .
In a delightful Gothic, if not medieval touch, the criminal is both short and has a literal mark of Cain in a distinctive birthmark on his neck only the ugly man is capable of ugly deeds.
Wexford here reminded me strongly of Terry Pratchett's Sam Vimes obviously not in terms of diet and vices, but in the character of acceptance of all people as they are and not being shocked by other people's Romantic arrangements and neither prejudiced against nor overly correcting against prejudice towards people from outside Sussex.
Who I wonder was reading who, or were both Rendell and Pratchett reading each other A suspicious situation,
If this review reads strangely, it did come mostly to me while either asleep or in semislumber, though that is not to rule out the chance that the book itself is a bit odd.
.