The Killing Doll: Weaves together the ultimately deadly stories of Pup Yearman, who sold his soul to the devil, his unhappy older sister, and butcher-knife keeper Diarmit Bawne. .... Live Flesh: After ten years in prison for shooting -- and permanently crippling -- a young policeman, Victor Jenner is released to a strange new world and told to make a new life for himself. It's hard to fill the days, but at least there's one blessing -- he was never convicted for all those rapes he committed. Then Victor meets David, the policeman he shot all those years ago, and David's beautiful girlfriend, Clare. And suddenly Victor's new life is starting to look an awful lot like the old one . . .
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, who also wrote under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, was an acclaimed English crime writer, known for her many psychological thrillers and murder mysteries and above all for Inspector Wexford.
This is a rare Rendell book that I did not finish. It's fairly typical of her standalone books as she delves into the psyche of a twisted person. However, I found it a little boring because I know a lot about this kind of psychopathology and wasn't real interested in how this guys life turned out. I stopped reading about 20% of the way through. I think others who aren't in my line of work would find it fascinating.
Just rating the killing doll, because I don't feel like reading second story in the book right now, maybe ever, the blurb didn't sound as interesting. As I suspected, the title was little bit misleading, I expected a doll that was somehow killing people, but it wasn't the case, there's dolls and killing involved, but in a different way. First sentence was quite captivating, expected more about that too, but it wasn't as big of a part of the story as one would wish. Anyway, I hated Dolly as soon as she hurt that poor cat. No excuse for animal abusers, they aren't human to me. All the characters were pretty realistic, story dragged a little, but after 50 pages or so it finally got somewhere. The ending was well deserved and a bit predictable.
Did not finish either stories. A long laboured ramp up to any (presumably) action, but I had no connection to any of the characters. Such a disappointment
Being a crime writer and with a title like Killing Doll, I suppose I expected a mystery... still have no idea what it is about. Did not finish, do not plan to read the rest