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Wexford’s White Whale
Review of the Arrow Books/Cornerstone Digital Kindle eBook edition (2010) of the original Hutchinson hardcover (1975)

‘Howard, you are my only ally.’ ‘Well, you know what Chesterton said about that.’ Wexford put on his dressing gown and went downstairs to find what Chesterton had said. ‘There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.’ - Inspector Wexford is bucked up by the support of his nephew Howard Fortune.

I was so swept up in my current binge read / re-read of Ruth Rendell (aka Barbara Vine) that I picked up an eBook edition of Wexford #9, having forgotten that I had already re-read & reviewed it back in 2022 as Wexford's Chimera when I discovered an old hoard of paperbacks. That review and rating stands after this additional re-read.

I will add that there is an extra level of enjoyment in a Rendell eBook binge as it allows for an easy markup of Notes and Highlights, allowing you to research Rendell's various literary quotes and allusions.

See cover image at https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/...
Cover image for the Arrow Books paperback reprint edition from 1985. Image sourced from Goodreads.

Trivia and Links
Shake Hands For Ever was adapted for television as part of the Ruth Rendell / Inspector Wexford Mysteries TV series (1987-2000) as Season 2 Episodes 4 to 6 in 1988 with actor George Baker as Inspector Wexford. You can watch the entire 3 episodes on YouTube here. ( )

Wexford's Chimera
Review of the Arrow Books paperback edition (1976/1985 reprint) of the original Hutchinson hardcover (1975)

Ruth Rendell continues to impress me with another of my 1980's re-reads. Shake Hands for Ever (most later editions show the title as Shake Hands Forever), is listed as No. 9 in her Inspector Wexford series (1964-2013).

Angela Hathall has been strangled in her cottage in West Sussex. She was discovered by her mother-in-law and husband as they came for a weekend visit. The husband Robert Hathall was commuting weekly to London for work. The trip had been meant as a reconciliation of Hathall's mother with his Angela, his 2nd wife, with whom there had been an earlier quarrel. Wexford has a theory about the crime, but no one else believes him, especially his Chief Constable Charles Griswold. After complaints by the husband, he is taken off the case.

Despite having to work the case unofficially, Wexford persists in having Hathall occasionally followed in London by paying off an old contact and by calling in favours from his nephew Howard Fortune, a Chief Superintendent of CID in London. Over the course of 15 months, Wexford continues to hope that the case will catch a break and that Hathall and a co-conspirator will be discovered. He is continually disappointed until a chance coincidence ties Hathall into an apparently unrelated payroll fraud. It all leads to a final dramatic conclusion with a shocking twist reveal by Wexford.

See book cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/Shakehandsforever.jpg
Cover of the original Hutchinson hardcover (1975). Image sourced from Wikipedia.

Rendell also plays a sly game with readers by introducing a suspiciously attractive neighbour widow Nancy Lake, who was a partial witness to events at the murder cottage. Lake seems especially drawn to Wexford and flirtatiously arranges to keep meeting him throughout the course of the investigation. Is she somehow involved in the crime or is the Inspector that much of a romantic interest to her? Rendell teasingly leaves their final meeting to your imagination: Did he or didn't he cheat on his faithful wife Dora? Your opinion of Wexford's character, based on the previous 8 novels, will determine your answer to that question.

I re-read Shake Hands for Ever due to the discovery of a hoard of my old 1980's mystery paperbacks while cleaning out a storage locker. I only have a few of the old Ruth Rendell paperbacks, so this isn't the start of one of my complete binge re-reads. Rendell is definitely one of the masters of the Silver Age of Crime though, so I will certainly be re-reading several of her books.

Trivia and Links
Shake Hands Forever was adapted for television as part of the long running series of The Ruth Rendell Mysteries (1987-2000), sometimes called 'The Inspector Wexford Mysteries'. It ran as Episodes 4 to 6 of Series 2 in 1988. The entire 3 Episodes can be viewed on YouTube here. The TV series stars actor George Baker as Inspector Wexford. ( )

Definitely one of my favorites so far in our buddy read of all the Wexfords in sequence. Clever plotting, quick and evocative character descriptions, a narrative that keeps moving along, and a tense ending. Although early on I suspected what did turn out to be the ultimate solution, Rendell threw in enough plausible red herrings that I dismissed the idea. Ha!

These books are great entertainment in compact form. They aren't noir, they aren't cozies, they are police procedurals written in the time before cell phones existed and before forensics took over (at least at this point in the series). It's all about the deductive powers and persistence of the detectives, Wexford in particular.

I always feel like letting out a very satisfied sigh when I've finished one of these. Time well spent. ( )

(35) The 9th book I think in the Inspector Wexford series. I read this in close proximity to the last on vacation and this is a good way to read these type of books - easier to get into the rhythm and the characters and the writing style which are a bit quirky in this series. There is a lot of repetitive seemingly inconsequential musings and very little action; Wexford is a police chief but is constantly inserting literary quotes (obscure ones to me at least) into casual conversations with other police men who seem to get the quote. Really? And the transitions between paragraphs and chapters are often not clear. But it all grows on you and this was a good one. I did not at all get the twist! A man brings his mother home to make amends with his second wife. The house is neat and clean when they get there but his bride is lying on the bed strangled
 The only clue, the murderer has an L shaped scar on their finger. So just look at the hands of the suspects - easy, right?

Not so simple and cleverly done though the novel itself is not really a page turner. The vice we explore this time through a ‘good’ character is infidelity and it is the Inspector himself that is at risk. Rendell seemed almost more interested in this side story than in the mystery which detracted in my opinion. Empirically this was about the same caliber as all the others but I think because of the well executed twist, it has been my favorite. I will read on and may try harder to read them in closer succession for best results. ( )