A New Lease of Death: Complete & Unabridged (Chief Inspector Wexford Mysteries) [Audio Cassette]

Some books transcend time: the characters, the situations, the themes. You can read them now and "connect" comfortably. Most Agatha Christie stories do this. Probably the reason they're still read and loved, in English and in translation around the world, to this day.

Other books are firmly rooted in a period: whether by the language, by the characters' preoccupations or by the society they depict. I'm thinking this is one of the main ways in which Dorothy Sayers differs from Dame Agatha ... The reader has to make a bit more effort to get into the mindset of the story. There are other books, though, that require more than a bit of effort: Ruth Rendell's A NEW LEASE OF DEATH fits into this category: the story works within a time and mindset that is very much of the past, but one whose sensibilities are presented in way deeply alienating to the modern reader, oddly much more so than the class-obsessed sensibilities of the Sayers-Wimsey novels. What do I mean? Well, for this story to work, we must accept that having a child out of wedlock is shameful to a paralysing degree. We are also required to identify with a protagonist (Henry Archery, a vicar) who is against his son's marrying the woman he loves, because of something her old dad did (murder an old woman and hang for it).

The Rev Archery tootles about Kingsmarkham trying, not very effectively, to prove the murderer innocent of his crime, because only then will the dear old fusspot sanction the marriage! It's deeply irritating. We have to put up with this wretched man's neurotic struggle to support his son in spite of what his faith tells him is morally unacceptable. I think the problem here is that everyone (Wexford, the son, the young woman) just rolls over and indulges the man's need to KNOW THE TRUTH - and the reader is obliged to indulge this nonsense as well. The obvious hypocrisy is never challenged, is never questioned, is even RESPECTED, even by Wexford, who in later books is something of an iconoclast, bursting pomposity and exposing hypocrisy.

And the ending, without giving anything away, is so very unsatisfying that it made me want to throw the book across the room. I'd seen it coming from about the halfway mark and was disappointed to be proven right. Sentimental and ludicrous.

I am struggling to explain why I'm so cross about this. Agatha Christie used the conceit of nice-chap-worrying-about-new-girlfriend-having-"bad-blood"-because-mum-or-dad-was-a-killer time and time again as a reason for opening old cases (FIVE LITTLE PIGS springs to mind). Maybe Dame Agatha gets away with it because for her books it was only ever a device for kick starting what was going to be a juicy puzzle with a satisfying solution. And A NEW LEASE OF DEATH doesn't offer a decent puzzle, only a wet REsolution.

In conclusion, today's readers are simply a world away from stories that indulge rather than shake up old moralities and hypocrisy. This isn't the same Ruth Rendell who would later write the wonderful A DARK-ADAPTED EYE.

Plus points: it's a nice edition and it's pleasant enough to spend time in Wexford's company. Ultimately, though, it's an opportunity to be thankful for the Rendell oeuvre that came after this odd little book.

Ruth Rendell must be one of the most frustrating authors working in the mystery genre, a woman of considerable talent who seems to go out of her way to undercut her own ability. And A NEW LEASE OF DEATH is rather typical of her work: what plot there is is repeatedly swamped by Rendell's determination to expose the psychology of her characters--psychology which is often far-fetched and which seldom has anything to do with anything in the book.

As the novel begins, Chief Inspector Wexford recalls his first murder case: the ax murder of an elderly woman. Fortunately for the then-inexperienced Wexford, the case was remarkably straight-forward; the woman's handyman was obviously guilty. But now, some fifteen years later, a Vicar named Archery has requested an interview with Wexford about the case, and when he arrives he wants to know if there was even a remote possibility that the man convicted was innocent after all. When Wexford negates the idea, Archery sets off on his own to interview the various people connected with the case, hoping to prove Wexford wrong.

The premise is much more interesting than the novel itself. The book opens with no less than two full chapters of exposition--and then Rendell's oddities take over, knocking herself out to expose the psychology of her characters, whether such has any bearing on the story or not. As for the mystery itself... Rendell writes and presents the story exactly as if she were creating a murder mystery, but there is no mystery, none at all, just a series of revelations that arise through pure coincidence and lead every one to some very obvious conclusions about everything from the crime itself to the way in which their lives have been affected by it.

There are a great many people who admire Rendell's novels, but while I recognize her stylistic skills I find her chiefly memorable as a mystery novelist whose novels either have a foregone conclusion or no conclusion at all. The book is readable--Rendell's style is very driving. But if you actually want to read a murder mystery that has any element of mystery to it, you'd do better to go with a different writer.

ruth rendell at her best as always, always sad to rach the end of one her books waiting a new story