The Babes in the Wood

A brother, a sister, and their babysitter disappear in the woods, and Wexford's got it on lock.

This one really did it for me. The torrential, rainy atmosphere really pushed it over the top. Also really dug all the red herrings, they deepened the thematic threads running throughout. These families are so angry and despondent, and rightfully so. How will they make it through? Oh, perhaps them, um, not staying together is the best thing for all.

From experience, I know I should be wary about reading a Rendell mystery. Her characters are always so irritating. In this case even more so: the father of two missing children doesn't care a whit and considers their disappearance as an inconvenience. Wexford should have taken him in for questioning right away to give him a wake up call at the very least. After a meandering investigation I'm finished. This was wasted time for me. I kept hoping it would get better and it didn't. If you like Rendell's Wexford series, my advice is to skip this one.

Police procedurals are my favorite mystery genre, and I think I've read all of Rendell's Inspector Wexford series. I like that he's kind of grumpy and behind the times, irritated with weather reports in metric figures. However, he's a great judge of people and his point of view is always satisfying. This is a rattling good mystery of two teenagers and their babysitter gone missing during a record rainstorm and flood. As usual Rendell give quick character sketches of everybody interviewed by the inspectors, and takes us on a tour of various dysfunctional families, including problems in Wexford's family. He shows a rare blindness to what's going on and motivations, which is interesting in itself. The mystery and its solution is a little show more bit far-fetched but I don't really care. show less

Lost in the Flood? + Wexford's Sixth Law
Review of the Seal Kindle eBook edition (2010) of the original Hutchinson (UK) hardcover (2002).

He performed a few tasks about the house, running errands, making the beds and the coffee – now is that an example of zeugma, Giles?'
Giles grinned. ‘No. It would be if you’d said, “making haste and the coffee”. Yours is syllepsis.’

It was probably not a good sign that the best quote that I could select out of the banter dialogue in this Wexford book was about grammar. This book just didn't have the zest and vigor of earlier Wexford investigations.

The town of Kingsmarkham is in the middle of a flood with homes endangered by the rising waters of the Kingsbrook. In this situation, two teenagers show more and their caregiver have gone missing, a situation which is only discovered after their parents return home from vacation. The mother suspects that they have been drowned, but Wexford is doubtful. The father seems indifferent and just wants to go back to work. Then a single body is found, but the others are still missing.

I just wasn't buying into some of the situations here and the explanation in the end was a bizarre letdown. People acted in all sorts of uncharacteristic ways e.g. who finds a dead body on their property and doesn't report it immediately? The dysfunctional family at the heart of the case were just tiresome. So an uncharacteristic so-so Wexford/Rendell book for me.

The Babes in the Wood continues my 2023 binge read / re-read of Ruth Rendell and this is the 19th of the Inspector Wexford series. I have had to skip over #15 to #18 as I haven’t been able to source them yet.

See cover image at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6d/Babes_in_the_wood.jpg
Cover image for the original Hutchinson (UK) hardcover edition from 2002. Image sourced from Wikipedia. May be found at the following website: http://pictures.abebooks.com/MARKRUSSELL/1371835539.jpg., Fair use, Link

Wexford's Laws
These are occasional quirky thoughts that Wexford has. I’ve skipped or missed some earlier ones and now I’m not sure that I’ll be able to find them again.

It is a peculiarity of the parent–child relationship that while children invariably have a key to their parents’ home the parents never have a key to theirs. Wexford’s sixth law, he thought wryly, half forgetting what the others were.

Other Reviews
Review at Curled Up with a Good Book by Julia Ravenscroft 2003.

Trivia and no Link
The Babes in the Wood was not adapted for television as part of the Ruth Rendell / Inspector Wexford Mysteries TV series (1987-2000) as the novel was published after the series had ended. show less

A good solid Inspector Wexford novel, which is to say a REALLY GOOD crime story. The country is experiencing massive flooding (even the Inspector's own house is at risk) and two children are missing -- weeks go by, the rain keeps falling, the children remain unfound, but the plot inexorably thickens. The Inspector continues to age (rather more slowly than I am doing) but remains an astute analyst of a changing society, and of unchanging human nature. I am reading the Inspector Wexford novels in order, and am nearing the end -- not a prospect I relish.

From Amazon:

With floods threatening both the town of Kingsmarkham and his own home and no end to the rain in sight, Chief Inspector Wexford already has his hands full when he learns that two local teenagers have gone missing along with their sitter, Joanna Troy. Their hysterical mother is convinced that all three have drowned, and as the hours stretch into days Wexford suspects a case of kidnapping, perhaps connected with an unusual sect called the Church of the Good Gospel. But when the sitter’s smashed-up car is found at the bottom of a local quarry–occupied by a battered corpse–the investigation takes on a very different hue.

My Thoughts:

I really like the character of Inspector Wexford. He is bright, well-read, compassionate, show more bitingly funny, and tremendously intuitive. He also has an uncanny knack for recognizing liars. Since this book is filled with liars, Wexford has many occasions to test his skill at separating truth from fiction. The author does a competent job of setting up a very complicated plot. The biggest problem with this novel is that the pace is, at times it's a bit static. A large portions of the book is devoted to Wexford's interviews with the relatives and acquaintances of the missing people. These interviews are tedious and doesn't move the story on quickly enough.
I enjoyed the plot and the mystery enough to give it 4 stars... but I did wish it would have stopped raining sooner. show less

Ruth Rendell is always good value. But this is even better value than most. Life isn't good anywhere in Inspector Wexford's community as the book begins: the area is dangerously flooded and the rain continues. Two teenagers and their 'babysitter' disappear when their parents are away for the weekend. Did they drown in the floods? Then the babysitter's dead body is found - some 3 months after the event. The landowner on whose property the decomposed crpse is found had actaully sen it significantly earlier. He's in trouble, his marriage is in trouble, the teenagers' parents marriage is in trouble. Wexford's daughter's marriage is also in trouble - unrelated to the deaths it's true.

Rendell plays with all these ravelled threads with her show more usual skill. The daily dramas of family and workplace life are interwoven with the increasingly complex threads of the plot, and right until the end, no resolution seems possible. But this is a murder mystery, so in the end the perpetrator is found. The identity may surprise you. show less