The Keys to the Street (Paperback)

Mary Jago is a lonely young woman, trying to get out of a relationship with Alistair, a violent and pathologically possessive man. She leaves him to house-sit for a rich elderly couple who are travelling abroad for six months. Mary agrees to meet the young man, Leo Nash, whom she donated bone marrow to, and soon finds herself becoming closely involved with him. Also coming into her new life on daily intervals is Leslie Bean, a 70-ish man who earns a bit of extra money walking the dogs of Mary's rich new neighbours. Bean is retired from being a manservant, and his past contains some very dodgy episodes indeed. Also very much part of the story are the down-and-outs who live on the streets, among them Roman, a well-educated ex-businessman who has deliberately chosen the vagrant's lifestyle to escape from his harrowing past. (I always wondered what it would be like for someone who had a bit of money to voluntarily take to the streets, and Rendell describes it convincingly here). On the fringes of it all is Hob, a pathetic low-life, addicted to whatever will take him out of things for a short while, and ready to do anything, usually involving violence, to earn the money to feed his habit.

Rendell's strength is that so much of what she writes, however dark and extreme it may be, rings true, most particularly here with Mary's relationship with Alistair, and Bean's sado-masochistic ex-employer, (the shadowy anonymous character of The Beater seems almost supernatural). The twist, when Mary finally finds out the truth about Leo Nash, I genuinely found eye-opening, and wasn't expecting at all.

Rendell also writes about London in a truthful but affectionate way that Dickens would have understood, although sometimes her love of giving directions can make her sound like an A-Z! Plus I liked the nice touch of having Mary working at a museum devoted to Irene Adler, the only woman Sherlock Holmes was every smitten by.

The main plot, I suppose, centres on Mary Jago, a young woman living in London. Mary has donated her own bone marrow to save the lie of a stranger. This generous act of kindness lead directly to the break-up of her relationship with the despiseable Alistair, and she moves out, taking up residence in a house on the edge of Regent’s Park, looking after it while the owners are on holiday. However, soon, the man whose live she has saved will alter her own life irrevocably for ever.

Inhabiting Regent’s Park (which, I suppose, would be the Sun of the earlier analogy) are the dropouts, the street-people, forgotten and ignored by society, until a vicious killer starts targeting them, leaving their bodies impaled upon the railings that border the park. Rendell creates several of these misfits, the most important one, I suppose, being Roman, a man who took to the streets, leaving behind his past and possessions, when his life was shattered upon the deaths of his wife and young children in a horrific accident. He is particularly interesting.

Then there is Bean, a retired butler-turned-dog-walker who roams the park every day exercising his canine clients, who despises the tramps who take refuge there. And then, most sinister of all, there is Hob, a hopeless drug addict living nearby in a rented flat, who is prepared to carry out acts of varying violence in return for very welcome payment…

I’ve never read a novel quite like this before, and I doubt that I will again. It is flawless in every way. A book so astoundingly good that I have now read it three times (remarkable, considering that I am rarely even prepared to set time by to re-read a book even once). But, then, almost all Rendell’s books have this effect upon me. She has a prose style like no other writer today. It is entirely without emotions, pretension, or anything else, and yet it is powerful and gripping. She doesn’t fill her books with unnecessary description – but when she does do descriptions, they are like gems thrown in a buskers case – instead creating a palpable sense of atmosphere and soon-to-be-destroyed normality. She has a brilliant sense of place, making London d seem claustrophobic and terrifying, and I am almost sure that If I suddenly found myself in Regent’s Park I would quicken my step distinctly through irrational and superfluous fear entirely of Rendell’s creating.

The characters she creates are drawn brilliantly, and are absolutely fascinating, every single one of them, so much so that I would gladly carry on reading about them if this book were even more than thrice its length. I want to know everything about them. The way they interact, each story occasionally connecting with one another, is also fascinating, and Rendell manages to examine brilliantly notions about effects and consequences.

“The Keys to the Street” (a title of genius!) is excellent. The whole thing sparkles with darkness, and holds a subtle originality that, along with other aspects, demonstrate clearly why Ruth Rendell is to be treasured.