From Doon with Death

This first Wexford police procedural shows its age; its 1964 moral stereotypes date the story badly. I had the answer way before the plodding detectives figure it out, and then, oh horrors! the truth is revealed. I shouldn't make fun of it. At least Rendell acknowledged such things could happen. But she conforms to the hysteria of the day, alas.

This review first appeared on CriminOlly.wordpress.com

Reading ‘From Doon With Death’, it was impossible not to compare it to the last crime novel I read, ‘No Way Out’ by Cara Hunter and consider the gulf that exists between the two books. Whereas Rendell’s debut was brief, straightforward, filled with memorable characters and centered around a tantalising mystery; Hunter’s novel is longer than it needs to be, needlessly gimmicky, forgettable and uninvolving. To put it another way, Rendell created her first Wexford masterpiece with deft, fine brushstrokes, whilst Hunter slapped the paint on with a roller.
‘From Doon With Death’ opens with the disappearance of a seemingly unremarkable woman, Margaret Parsons. Before long show more her corpse is found and the investigation, by Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant, the wonderfully named Inspector Burden, becomes a murder inquiry. The books proceeds as you would expect a whodunnit to, with the detectives interviewing various people with connections to the victim and building up a picture of her life and last days.
Rendell pulls off the marvellous trick of making it feel like the answer to the mystery is only ever a page away. For most of the second half of the book the identity of the murderer was on the tip of my tongue, so close I could almost taste it but just out of reach. Despite its narrative simplicity, the book is so skillfully constructed and played out that it really is a joy to read. The impact of the denouement may have been blunted a little by the 50 years that have passed since the novel’s publication, but it was still a very effective twist.
At under 200 pages it is very short by modern standards, but there is no lack of depth. The various suspects and other characters all leap off the page fully formed. Rendell manages to bring them to life with just a few words, making them convincing, distinctive and fascinating. As a result the emotional impact of the events that befall the characters grows over time, so that the end, when it comes, is truly tragic. Another thing that struck me was how little we learn about Wexford or his assistant Burden in comparison to the other characters. The two really are ciphers, with only minimal physical descriptions and no discussion at all of their personal lives. Instead they stand in for the mystery loving reader’s restless curiosity, making us focus, undistracted, on who might have perpetrated the crime. This is in sharp contrast to the approach taken by many modern crime writers (including the aforementioned Hunter), who pack their books with often unnecessary sub-plots about the lives of their investigators. It often seems that today's writers feel they need every page to have some incident on it, rather than trusting the mystery to keep the reader engaged.
Clearly, modern British detective fiction owes a debt to its grand dame, Rendell. I worry though that the simple essence of what makes books like 'From Doon With Death' great has been lost over the years, as publishers push for books to be a certain length or to contain current popular tropes (multiple narrators being the one that often sets my teeth on edge). The stripped down leanness of this decades old book was a very refreshing change and made for a gripping, delightful read. show less

A solid first novel from the prolific Ruth Rendell which introduced the popular character of Inspector Wexford to the British public. This edition has a rather breathless introduction from Ian Rankin and a more measured Afterword by Ruth Rendell herself, written half a century later.

I enjoyed it but thought the book a little over-praised in itself. Yes, it introduces the police procedural into a more realistic 'Mayhem Parva' (here Kingsmarkham, standing in for the actual Midhurst in Sussex) but it still relies on what might be a parody of the final reveal (here in an attic).

It was a breath of fresh air in 1964 but Rendell was right in her Afterword to present it (in 2014) as a historical novel as much as or more than it was a 'mystery'. show more The book depends on a particular long-lost culture - that of post-war Britain, small town conformity and accepted restrictive mores.

Rendell wrote that the book could not be written today. She was right. It is what perhaps makes it interesting. She writes with humanity and sympathy and helps us understand a world which most of us would find intolerable today but one where we might still regret the loss of hedgerows.

As to the story itself, we can say little because it is in the nature of the 'mystery' that nothing may be revealed. Perhaps the ending is an edge hysterical and closer to the past than the future but, once that is out of the way, it ultimately satisfies.

The characterisation is generally plausible, the locality presented with an attractive realism (the interiors of houses are made palpable and even trigger childhood memories of that lost world) and the detection follows a reasonable logic.

As a police procedural we also realise that policing was still not yet so much a matter of science and forensics as one primarily of intuition, dogged leg work and getting people to talk. We are likely to find the police methods intrusive but what alternative existed then?

The treatment of one key character might also cause a shiver to the spine because one senses how miscarriages of justice might occur in a period when the murderer was at great risk of being hanged from the neck until they were dead.

Rendell went on to great things, with Inspector Wexford becoming a popular TV detective in due course but this book is not in itself a masterpiece, just an above average crime mystery that is easy to read, engages the reader and is well written. show less

The first of Rendell's Inspector Wexford series. It's a beauty. An ordinary housewife goes missing, and is ultimately found dead in a patch of woods. Who among her limited circle of acquaintances could possibly have had reason to murder her? Wexford scopes it all out, with some absolutely fine observations and reactions that were surely ahead of the time for 1964, and which I can't really mention without being spoilerish. This is written in classic British mystery style, with some obvious clues, some hidden information, some red herrings, and the suspects gathered uncomfortably together for the reveal. I'm glad she has written so much; she'll be one of those authors I know I can always turn to when I need something guaranteed to show more entertain me for a few hours.
September 2014 show less

From Doon With Death is the first book in Ruth Rendell's long-running Inspector Wexford mystery series. I've read several of the later books, so I thought I'd go back and see how it all started. And I was pleased to see that it all started excellently. Everything is here: the intriguing characters and settings, the wry and sometimes macabre humor, and an ingenious and absorbing plot. And I think the book has aged relatively well – given that, by today's standards, a lot of the more "shocking" aspects of the novel are just a little less so. In spite of the publisher's claim of a "blindsiding" case, I managed to figure out what was going on pretty early in the story. But that didn't lessen my enjoyment. I believe if I'd read this one show more when it first appeared in 1964, it would definitely have kept me coming back for more. show less

Wexford Begins
Review of the Arrow Books 50th Anniversary Kindle* eBook edition (2014), with a Foreword by Ian Rankin and an Afterword by Ruth Rendell, of the original John Long Ltd. hardcover (1964)

From long experience Burden knew that whatever may happen in detective fiction, coincidence is more common than conspiracy in real life.

I got into the habit of binge reading or re-reading classic mystery authors during the pandemic and I now find it to be a continuing habit. I only ever read a few of Ruth Rendell's (aka Barbara Vine's) books at the time they were first published, but I remember the Inspector Wexford TV series fondly and thought that I'd start a Rendell binge for 2023.

As Rendell explains in her Afterword, From Doon with Death show more was originally written as a one-off standalone. simply as a challenge to see if she could write a whodunnit style of mystery. The character of Chief Inspector Wexford here is somewhat colder than the character in the later books and the TV series. The home life is completely absent and the character is not given to quoting Shakespeare or other classics. He even seems to be a bit contemptuous of the Victorian poetry books that feature in the plot. Faithful assistant Detective Inspector Mike Burden is already quite set in his ways.

See cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/45/Fromdoonwithdeath.jpg
Cover image for the original John Long Ltd. (UK) hardcover edition from 1964. Image sourced from Wikipedia.

From Doon with Death (the origin of the 'Doon' nickname is never explained in the book as far as I noticed) was quite a clever mystery with a radical (for its time) twist in its reveal ending. I thought that there was a fair number of clues for the reader which allowed you to make the leap to the solution somewhat ahead of Wexford and Burden. I always say that a little flattery of the reader by an author is a surefire way to gain a readership. Rendell went on to a long and prestigious career after this first outing.

Trivia and Links
* The Kindle editions of this book appear to be completely muddled on GR, so I've used the 50th Anniversary paperback as a proxy.

From Doon with Death was adapted for the Ruth Rendell / Inspector Wexford Mysteries TV series (1987-2000) as Series 5 Episodes 7 & 8 in 1991 with actor George Baker (who also wrote the adaptation) as Chief Inspector Wexford. You can watch the entire 2 episodes on YouTube here. show less

This is the first in Rendell's Inspector Wexford series, which someone tempted me with recently. You can see flashes of what became a classic series here but overall it's a fairly ordinary murder mystery set in the 1960s. I'll keep reading despite the "Introduction to Inspector Wexford" piece at the back of the book that quoted Rendell as saying she hates Agatha Christie. What?! Blasphemy, I tell you.