Master of the Moor

If you were to check out my reading journal you'd see an AWFUL lot of Ruth Rendell in it, as she's one of the most consistently wonderful writers I've ever encountered. Then again, if you're checking out my reading journal I'd need to have a strong word with you, as I'm not quite sure I've given you permission.

_Master of the Moor_ is absolutely fan-tabulously well-written, and what's best about it is the denouement is revealed very, very slowly. There's no sudden "Whoops! Surprise, it's a psychopath!" here. It's one long, slow build up to a conclusion you hopefully won't have anticipated, though after you close the book you may find yourself feeling rather silly you missed the clues. But don't feel too silly, as I missed them, show more too.

Wonderful stuff! show less

It started out somewhat slowly and a bit odd and then built up to very, very creepy indeed. Stephen was really quite a scary character and, yet, I almost wanted him not to succeed but to just not suffer too much for his terrible choices and/or delusions. She really did an amazing job of building up the suspense and making it a combination of whodunit physcological thriller. I'll be interested in what bookclub thinks of it.

A young woman’s body is found strangled with head shorn on Vangmoor, a bleak and chilling place. A local villager, Stephen Whalby, is *the* self-proclaimed authority on the moors and when a second woman disappears there, he is only too eager to help the police with their search, especially as it appears that a stranger is trying to assert control over what he considers to be *his* moors…."Master of the Moor" is a stand-alone novel from Ruth Rendell, published in 1982 but feeling quite timeless in its storytelling, which depicts an already troubled man slowly going off the rails entirely. Recommended.

This is a Ruth Rendell stand-alone published in 1982, before she began publishing this style of book under the pseudonym of Barbara Vine.

Like his grandfather before him, Stephen Walby has an obsession with Vangmoor. It came as a surprise to me that Stephen is a relatively young man, only in his early twenties. I thought Rendell made him seem much older than he is. He also seems to have the knack of turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time, eventually giving the police no alternative to taking him in for questioning, regarding him as a "person of interest" in the Vangmoor murder cases.

The story takes a savage twist about half way through, when Stephen reacts violently upon finding out that his wife has been having an affair. Is show more Stephen Walby a dormant psychotic? His comfortable world is constantly under challenge. The strings that anchor Stephen to reality are snapped when a childhood friend reappears.

And just when the reader thinks they have it all worked out, the book takes another twist, one that you could not have predicted, as the Master of the Moor claims his final victim.

Another of the characteristics of these early Rendell stand-alones, by comparison with the Wexford series, is that they are relatively short books. According to Amazon, it is only 218 pages long. For example THE VAULT, one of the later Wexfords, is more than 60 pages longer, as are many of her later books. show less

A pleasant way to spend an evening. Rendel does a good job portraying unsympathetic characters and keeping one reading.

A decent enough mystery, though not in the manner of the detective or police procedural type. More of E. A. Poe dark and sinister getting into the minds of not quite balanced folk.

A decent enough mystery, though not in the manner of the detective or police procedural type. More of E. A. Poe dark and sinister getting into the minds of not quite balanced folk.