A Guilty Thing Surprised

Poets and Lovers
Review of the Arrow Books/Cornerstone Digital Kindle eBook edition (2009) of the original Hutchinson hardcover (1970)

High instincts, before which our mortal nature,
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised. - William Wordsworth from Ode to Immortality

This continues my 2022-23 binge read / re-read of Ruth Rendell (aka Barbara Vine and this is the 5th of her Chief Inspector Wexford series. A Guilty Thing Surprised involves the murder of Elizabeth Nightingale with the suspects being the various members of her & her husband Quentin's extended household and that of her brother, Denys Villiers, who is an obsessive expert in the life and poetry of William Wordsworth.

Villiers smiled a little, apparently at something in his

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own book. Aware as he was of the huge vanity of writers, Wexford was nevertheless unable to understand how one of them could actually laugh at something he had written himself.

See book cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/Aguiltythingsurprised.jpg
Cover image for the original Hutchinson (UK) hardcover edition from 1970. Image sourced from Wikipedia.

The poetry aspect is actually a clue to the final solution which dawns upon Inspector Wexford towards the end. In the meantime there are plenty of suspicious goings on to investigate and explain. Was the marriage of the Nightingales actually as happy as it appeared? Why did Elizabeth and her brother seem to hate each other? Was the youthful gardener a possible secret lover of Elizabeth? Wexford and his faithful assistant Mike Burden have many trails to follow before the conclusion is reached.

This was yet another excellent and unconventional mystery from Ruth Rendell and I am excited to continue this binge read for 2023. I have to try and source some of the non-Wexfords as well, as I have never previously read those.

One might say with Wilde that the good ended happily and the bad unhappily, for that is the meaning of fiction.

Trivia and Links
A Guilty Thing Surprised was adapted for the Ruth Rendell / Inspector Wexford Mysteries TV series (1987-2000) as Series 2, Episodes 1 to 3 in 1988 with actor George Baker as Inspector Wexford. You can watch the entire 3 episodes on YouTube here.

Read about Five Key Works by Ruth Rendell in The Guardian, May 2, 2015. show less

(44) This was a very quickly read installment of Rendell's Inspector Wexford series - the fifth. And I think my favorite. I read it in about 2 sittings and while not scintillating, it kept the pages turning and I am finally starting to appreciate the pattern of a Wexford mystery. The crime, some character explorations heavily laced with classism and judgement with an overlay of lust or romantic love and a solution come too quickly and usually inexplicably arrived at by the detectives. In this case, Elizabeth Nightingale, a rich middle age woman, is murdered out for a walk on her estate - it is a straightforward whodunnit? The husband, the maid, the handyman, the brother, was there a lover?

For whatever reason, I was able to enjoy this show more one more than the previous installments. I had heard they get better, or again, perhaps just the comfortable pattern recognition by this reader. Not as good as her stand-clones but I am beginning to see Rendell's sense of irony, keen story-telling, and intelligence that I appreciated for instance in "A Judgement in Stone', or A Dark-Adapted Eye,' show through. A solid and quickly read tight little mystery. I guess I will read on in the series - I was ambivalent for a bit. show less

Not the best in the series so far (I think it's #5), rather obvious in its secrets. Or maybe I've been reading better writing and it just didn't match up

Chief Inspector Wexford is unpleasantly surprised to find his assistant, Detective Inspector Burden, right and himself wrong several times In A Guilty Thing Surprised. Fortunately for his self-esteem, Rex figures out whodunnit while Mike is still clueless.

Elizabeth Villiers Nightingale is a lovely blonde who works hard to look younger than her 41 years. Thoughtful, kind, and ever democratic, she's loved by her husband and most of their servants. The only person known to really dislike her was her brother, Denys Villiers.

Denys teaches Latin and Greek at Kingsmarkham Boys' Grammar School (also known as King Edward the Sixth Foundation for the Sons of Yeomen, Burgesses and Those of the Better Sort). There the students' nickname for him is show more 'Old Roman Villa'. Denys has also written and had published several books about the poet William Wordsworth. His latest is Wordsworth in Love.

Denys gets along very well with his brother-in-law, wealthy Quentin Nightingale, an underwriter for Lloyds of London. Quentin is proud of having an author in the family (they are both fans of Wordsworth). Quentin went so far as to fix up the Old House at Myfleet Manor so Denys would have a quiet place to write. Denys' wife, Georgina, resents the time he spends at the Old House.

The book was originally published in 1970, so don't be surprised that the older servants at the manor disapprove of the way the two youngest servants, Sean Lovell (a gardener who dreams of becoming a pop singer in London), and Katje Doorn (the Dutch au pair girl), 'don't know their place'.

Katje is unabashedly sexual, still rather shocking in that last year of the Swinging Sixties. She makes both Wexford and Burden uncomfortable: Burden because she comes on to him, Wexford because she tells him he resembles her old uncle in Friesland.

It was interesting to learn that 'blimey' ['gorblimey'] is short for 'God blind me' in chapter two. Ewwww!

I did guess the guilty thing, although I was very wrong about part of it. It's good not to be able to guess things too quickly. It was a quick read because I enjoyed it. I rarely read Police Procedural mysteries, but I started listening to my library's Wexfords on CD and discovered I liked them well enough to check out a printed version when no audio version was available. show less

This is one Ruth Rendell's earlier ones in the Inspector Wexford series, number 5 I believe.

Elizabeth Nightingale likes to take nightly walks on the grounds behind her house, Myfleet Manor. When she is found murdered, Inspector Wexford soon finds that there are many suspects that could have committed the crime. Quentin, her husband, Georgina, her sister in law, her au pair Katje, and her brother Denys Villiers.

What I absolutely love about Ruth Rendell's writing is that the story becomes more about the killer's reasons for committing murderous acts than the actual reveal of the "whodunit". This is one that had intrigued until the end.

Although Rendell, as always, is a master of the local police procedural I didn't enjoy this as much as the previous book in the series. To her credit, although the principal characters are well settled into their final forms now, they show small developments in personality that make them more human and less caricature. Wexford, especially, demonstrates a high degree of self awareness.

I guess my small issue with the book is that I am not as much of a Wordsworth enthusiast as Wexford and other characters in the book, and thus some of the plot points didn't jump out at me as quickly as they might for others. Still, Wexford's ruminations on aging added an engaging element, and it turned out to be an enjoyable read.

Not bad. Not great, but enjoyable. Rendell seems to have hit a stride with Christie-style whodunnits, and while that's fun on occasion, when I read about a policeman I expect a procedural. Really, other than his title, there's nothing to distinguish Wexford (in this novel, at least) from any old private dick. The humor is good, though, and I'm finding myself drawn to the recurring characters more. I suspect that she purposefully changed the character of Burden, though only time will make that clear. A solid entry, but now I needs meat.