If there was a "Life’s Little Ironies" competition, author Ruth Rendell might be the winner. She was fired from her newspaper job after writing an article about the local tennis club's annual dinner which she had not actually attended – and so she “neglected” to mention the untimely death of the after-dinner speaker mid-speech.
False alibis, erroneous statements, sudden deaths … some of the major ingredients of good crime fiction!
Rendell moved on to become one of the most celebrated mystery authors of our time and has won the Silver, Gold, and Cartier Diamond Daggers from the Crime Writers' Association, three Edgars and a Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America, and countless other awards.
For her literary efforts, she was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1996 and a life peer as Baroness Rendell in 1997. She turned 79 this year.
Many credit Rendell and P. D. James for transforming the entire mystery genre of the whodunit into the whydunit.
Chistopher Ray sums it all up quite nicely in a 1996 New Statesman article: “One rereads Dickens, Chesterton said, because the books are so memorable. One rereads mysteries, on the other hand, because they are so forgettable. But try not remembering Ruth Rendell. The only thing you forget in her company is yourself. If the novel's primary moral function is to help you see the world as others see it, Rendell is a moralist of the first water. Child killers, drugged-out wasters, catwalk models, care assistants, sociopaths, withered actresses, tormented middle-aged GPs – these are just a few of the alien lives this latter-day Dostoevsky has made sense of for those of us who like to think ourselves less troubled. “
In addition to over forty psychological crime novels – which she also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine – Rendell has produced twenty two Chief Inspector Wexford police procedurals. The series began in 1964, and the latest book, The Monster in the Box, was recently released.
Sadly, there are rumors that this will be the last title in one of the best-written detective series in the genre's history. The author has said, "I don't want to do any more Wexfords. I have other interests now." But, fans, take heart – her editor of 27 years says that the series will continue. Stay tuned!
