“From Doon with Death” is the first novel ever written by Ruth Rendell, the one with which she earned recognition as a new master of the genre. Probably its being the first is the reason why it reads so easily without putting any strain on the reader. In fact, it’s not much shorter than “Shake Hands For Ever” by the same author, but, unlike the other one, gives no feeling of being unnecessarily stretched. There’s nothing depressive about it, either.
Both Chief Inspector Wexford and Inspector Burden are much younger in this book (naturally), and Burden hasn’t yet dropped the habit of calling Wexford “sir”, but he is already self-confident enough to insist upon his solution of the case, even after it’s been proven wrong. But he is, nevertheless, a lot of help to Wexford when it comes to collecting evidence and questioning witnesses.
The book has everything to be a good detective story: an intricate riddle, an unexpected solution (very unexpected), a nice gallery of faces and characters: rich and poor, vivacious and shy, proud and insecure, extravagant and simple. There is a long and painstaking (but not boring) procedure of looking for clues, questioning people who knew the victim and unravelling an extremely complicated chain of facts and emotions from a single sample of expensive lipstick dropped by someone not far away from the place where the body was found. Fragments from Doon’s letters inserted here and there into the narrative add exquisiteness and reveal Ruth Rendell’s ability to write in a much more refined literary style than the one commonly used for detective stories. They are “special extras” making the experience of reading this excellent book even more pleasant – like quotations from Shakespeare might have done.
The characters, different as they are, all have something in common. Few of them are exactly attractive; most are outright displeasing. They might not be in real life – there is nothing particularly nasty about any of them, mainly just typical human weaknesses – and it all comes down to the fact that the author emphasises their faults and says next to nothing about their virtues. Still, none of them – not even the murderer – will wake up any disgust or contempt in the soul of the reader. Sympathy is what I felt for them all – but I wouldn’t want to befriend any of them, except, perhaps, the victim. Too bad Ruth Rendell consistently makes a point of murdering the nicest person in every book.
The final explanation left me mildly shocked – mostly because I knew it was a book written in 1964. But I’ll leave it at that, just so I don’t spoil my readers the pleasure of reading and trying to guess the name of the murderer.
I do recommend the book.
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"From Doon With Death" By Ruth Rendell
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