The Babes In The Wood

Inspector Wexford #19

by Ruth Rendell

A woman phoned to say she and her husband went to Paris for the weekend, leaving their children with a - well, teen-sitter, I suppose, got back last night to find the lot gone and naturally she assumes they've all drowned.' There hadn't been anything like this kind of rain in living memory. The River Brede had burst its banks, and not a single house in the valley had escaped flooding. Even where Wexford lived, higher up in Kingsmarkham, the waters had nearly reached the mulberry tree in his once immaculate garden. The Subaqua Task Force could find no trace of Giles and Sophie Dade, let alone the woman who was keeping them company, Joanna Troy. But Mrs Dade was convinced her children were dead. This was an investigation which would call into question many of Wexford's assumptions about the way people behaved, including his own family ...

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Detective, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook, Thriller

416 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

A.K.A. Barbara Vine

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.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

A readable book, perfectly suited to a rainy day like yesterday which could be spent in bouts of compulsive reading interrupted by sawing up an old ironing board, but I do not think I will trouble myself to read another Ruth Rendell novel. I mean it was ok...

The only thing I would say against it was that it was a plodding book, very slow, it takes several months to resolve the mystery, and I felt the typical modus operandi of the police officers in this novel was to ask a few questions, telling the person they were speaking to that they would need to ask some more questions, then wander off for lunch or to be interrupted by a sub plot before wandering back and asking some more questions before warning they would be back to ask some more questions. Why, oh why, I wondered, did they not ask all their questions in one go. I then had to marvel at the restraint of the police in not charging almost everybody they spoke to with wasting police time. After about a hundred pages I was growing tired and I yearned for the pure lunacy of Agatha Christies The Mystery of the Blue Train this is a serious spoiler in which a ghost reveals the murderer , but then fortunately the chief Detective has a dream that tells him what kind of location that the car was abandoned in. Ah, pure bliss, now I day dream of the pharmaceutical Detective who hunts the shelves of the chemist for any medication that encourages vivid dreams in order to walk the royal road to the subconscious for insights into solving cases.

Sadly sleep solves nothing in this story. It is a picture of Britain, or possibly just Sussex, that is materially prosperous but mostly unhappy, relationships are characterised by violence against women, or henpecked men, with one or two somehow balanced on a knife edge maintaining civility. There is a malaise in the land, some deal with it by turning to fundamentalist Christianity, others through alcohol, inappropriate and unsatisfactory relationships are symptomatic.

I wonder a bit that Wexford had to explain so much of the plot to one of his sidekicks at the end of the novel, perhaps that was meant to explain why Wexford was the Boss and the other guy was not? It does come across that though the author was turning her gaze to her slower readers and explaining the story to them before they closed the book.

Rendell mentions that her lead detective, Wexford, is an atheist. I am not sure why she felt the need to stress this, romantically I imagined that maybe Rendell was trying to discourage sales in the USA, possibly to annoy her publisher - there was something about the text that encouraged ideas about self-sabotage. Anyway, I felt this was perfectly readable, but if you have been to Sussex or as I like tosay as often as possible Zuzzex, unremarkable.

[Jaksen · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far, one of my favorite Inspector Wexford novels, by Ruth Rendell. I almost gave it five stars, but had one small (huge?) criticism about the book.

First off, it's the story of what happened to three missing people, two teenagers and a young adult woman. They've gone missing and it's up to Wexford, Burden, and associates to find them. This is all set against a backdrop of a flooded English countryside, with the nearby river literally moving right up the hill to Wexford's house. The feeling throughout the book is one of near-continual rain, dampness, and all the rot that comes with it. Think swamps, bogs, marshes. (Easy for me to do where I live; I've got a woody swamp in my back yard.) The whole book just feels wet, wet, wet. Even the daily newspaper being delivered to Wexford's house is water-logged and needs drying out before he can read it.

There's also a subplot, as there often is in this series, involving one of Wexford's daughters and her continuing issues with men. As this particular daughter is newly-divorced, and attractive, she's had a small succession of boyfriends in recent books. Her newest love interest is a problem and that's where I cut off one star. The development involving this fellow doesn't read true to me, although had the book been written in the 1990's or earlier, I'd have believed it. But what happens with this man and Wexford's handling of it, nope, I didn't believe it. I was very disappointed in the way Rendell handled the situation. I don't like to 'rewrite' the book I'm reading, going on with why didn't she do this? And oh, no, not the way it should have gone! Still, I had a problem with Sylvia, the daughter, and the boyfriend, so be it...

The main story, though, was beautifully written, littered with the usual mystery 'clues,' which this time I just didn't get. I had no idea who did what to whom and why until the very last pages. I've read a lot of mysteries and I've written a few, but this one totally surprised me. I was saying, why didn't I see that! That's so obvious! Yeah, after the fact.

There's a religious cult, the usual uncooperative witnesses, the general dislike of the police that so many English (in Rendell's books) seem to have. My general opinion of this is that those in the 'middle class' more or less appreciate what the police do and try to help them when and if they can, but not in England! Arrogant, snobbish, superior attitudes prevail. I'm surprised some of Rendell's characters, on meeting the police at the front door don't tell them to go around to the back and enter that way. This is a reoccurring theme in her books: a general lack of respect for authority, and maybe it has something to do with Rendell's background, not sure about that.

However, this was a good book, solid mystery. I will be sad when I run out of Inspector Wexford books to read.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good story. Three people go missing including two teenagers. Wexford investigates and comes up again a hysterical wife and unhelpful husband. Coupled with this the weather in Sussex is continuous rain with the threat of flooding. Wexford’s daughter Sylvia is also dating an unsuitable man.

The investigation takes them to a fundamentalist church which Giles one of the teenagers was a member. The babysitter Joanna who went missing also has a suspicious past.

Very readable and the solution a bit farfetched although possible. I enjoyed Wexford’s helplessness with the internet and his mistakes in judging people. I think the red herrings were good as with all Rendell’s stories lots too of nasty people. In particular, the eccentric Grandmother of Giles and Sophia with her meddling.

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a slightly less than average effort by Rendell. It's pretty obvious "whodunnit" and the investigation is way more meandering than necessary. Other than providing the hysterical mother of the missing kids something be hysterical about (Oh, no! The floods! The kids have drowned....I just know it!) there's no point to the whole flood story in the book. The hysterical mother could have been just as hysterical without the rising river...and maybe the plot would have been a bit more on point. And, honestly, I get a little tired of the "repressive religious" people who so often get thrown in as suspects whether they actually did it or not. (Did they? I'm not telling.) The rendering of Joanna's character is interesting--not a standard female type. And Rendell's writing itself is still very good at this stage--I just wish the story had been a little more straight-forward--more true red-herring sidelines and less flooding and family drama for the Wexfords (will Wexford's daughters ever have a happy life?) would go a long way. ★★ and 3/4. [rounded to three here]

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

[Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.’

[2.5 rounded up]
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 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.


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.

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had potential, but as the plot unfolded, I found it more and more tedious. There were so many cliches it became rather laughable at times: women-hating religious fanatics, repressed spinsters, nagging women, drunken aristocrats. There was even an absent-minded professor, though the author tried to excuse it by pointing out that the character was a cliche. Wouldn't it be better to avoid such cliches altogether? Overall, the mystery was fairly well laid out and I had a good idea of who the culprit was, but by the time we got to the reveal (which involved way too much exposition), I didn't much care. One aspect of the plot I found bewildering, though, was an episode of domestic violence. The man beats his partner bloody, binds her, and locks her in a closet. She has a phone in her pocket, so she's able to call the police. But when they arrive, they free her, and then do nothing to the man. What?! Do they not have laws against domestic violence in Great Britain? I found it beyond appalling--bewildering, even--that nothing happened to the man. Perhaps there was an explanation and I missed it, but I don't think so. This is my third or fourth book by Ruth Rendell and although I admire her intelligence and skill as a writer, I don't think I'll be in any hurry to try any more.

[Noella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nadat ze een weekendje weg zijn geweest, ontdekt het echtpaar Dade dat hun kinderen Giles en Sophie, en de oppas verdwenen zijn.
Inspecteur Wexford wordt op de zaak gezet.
De moeder van de kinderen denkt dat ze verdronken zijn, omdat er overstromingen waren. De mogelijkheid van ontvoering wordt ook geopperd.
Na enkele weken wordt de auto van de oppas gevonden, met haar lijk erin. Hij staat op een landgoed, dat dikwijls verlaten is, want de eigenaars verblijvend de meeste tijd in London. Het is wel opvallend dat een open plek op het landgoed soms gehuurd wordt door leden van een geloofsgemeenschap die hier hun rituelen uitvoeren. En ook Giles Dade behoort tot die gemeenschap.

Ik vond dat het boek nogal traag vorderde. Er werden zovele zijwegen bewandeld, die uiteindelijk op niets uitdraaiden. En voor de lezer was het eigenlijk door de inleiding al duidelijk dat de sekte er iets mee te maken had.

Ik had beter verwacht.

[Vastine · Rating 2 out of 5]

(SPOILERS) An unfortunate misstep for the usually reliable Ruth Rendell. The book is filled with uninteresting subplots (especially one about a wealthy alcoholic and his narcissistic model wife) that constantly undermine the flow of the story. Like so many European crime novels, the story includes the usual religious boogiemen without even a hint of nuance. The solution largely comes via a plot device not the investigation we have been following(though to be fair to Rendell, pieces of the investigation help illuminate to the solution but they were not really the vehicle to its discovery.) And after that event, when the plot finally starts to move with a little passion, we are treated to a trip to Sweden complete with travel suggestions that kills all of the momentum. Finally, the explanation of the crime comes not through plot but by an unnecessarily long-winded and sometimes silly explanation from Wexford to his partner. When his partner kept asking Wexford to get to the point I shared his frustration. Rendell is a great writer and I will happily continue to read her books but my advice is to take a miss on this one.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read by.................. Nigel Anthony
Total Runtime......... 12 Hours 10 Mins

Description: 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.

3* From Doon With Death (Inspector Wexford, #1)
3* A New Lease of Death (Inspector Wexford, #2)
3* Wolf to the Slaughter (Inspector Wexford, #3)
2* The Best Man to Die (Inspector Wexford, #4)
3* A Guilty Thing Suprised #5
3* No More Dying Then (Inspector Wexford, #6)
3* Murder Being Once Done (Inspector Wexford, #7)
3* Some Lie and Some Die (Inspector Wexford, #8)
3* Shake Hands Forever (Inspector Wexford, #9)
3* A Sleeping Life (Inspector Wexford, #10)
3* Put on by Cunning (Inspector Wexford #11)
1* Speaker of Mandarin (Inspector Wexford, #12)
3* An Unkindness of Ravens (Inspector Wexford, #13)
3* The Veiled One (Inspector Wexford, #14)
3* Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (Inspector Wexford, #15)
3* Road Rage (Inspector Wexford, #17)
3* Harm Done (Inspector Wexford, #18)
3* The Babes in the Wood (Inspector Wexford, #19)

3* Not in the Flesh (Inspector Wexford, #21)
2* The Vault (Inspector Wexford, #23)

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am on a bit of a Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine (same person) binge right now. Her books are easy reads, not too complicated, and usually extremely interesting. But this may be my least favorite of her works.

Why? It moved at a crawl....two pre-teens and their minder have disappeared while the parents are on a trip to Paris. The police have no clues until they find the minder's car over the side of a cliff with her body inside but no sign of the children. Are the children kidnapped or are they dead at the hands of an unknown person?

The premise is good but too much time is spent with supporting characters, all of whom are extremely disagreeable people, even the parents and neighbors. And the ending really stretches reality or at least for me. But it is still Rendell and even her lesser books are interesting to a point. I don't recommend it but it is not a waste of time.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

ZZZZZZZZZZZ--am I finished yet? This book was OK, the writing was excellent, but it dragged on. The story could have been shortened a bit. The plot was good, but the outcome was very predictable, at least to me. I'm going to read The Rottweiler next, also by Ruth Rendell. I've heard it is really good.

[Ilze · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rendell has an extremely long list of novels to her name, some famously "Inspector Wexford" ones ... but why bother reading them? For the entire 300+ pages I've just waded through, I honestly had the sense that the writer was sitting at her typewriter laughing at her readers: She clearly knew from the very beginning who killed Joanna Troy and why the Dade children went missing, as well as where they were. All the questions Wexford asks and all the investigations as to what, where and how are mere red herrings meant to "entertain" the reader - not to mention Wexford's personal life. The way the excerpts about his daughters Sylvia and Sheila (I mean HOW is a reader supposed to tell the difference between the daughters if their names are so similar? They certainly don't have enough characteristics to distinguish them!) are placed in the text, it almost interrupts this slow-moving narrative. Besides, what was the point of the floods? Why tell the reader about Wexford's garden slowly absorbing some or other river that's not meant to reach his garden wall? It certainly had nothing to do with the main plot.

Who's telling the story? It isn't Wexford, in spite of the occasional "I" thrown into "his" thought-processes. I still (and this book has 323 pages, so I should know!) don't have a clear picture in my mind of what Wexford looks like. In fact, in spite of Rendell's attempts to create a "homely" life for him and his wife Dora, I don't know anything about her, except that she likes gardening. Does this make for a good story? Where's the suspense, the puzzles the reader can start solving for himself? I'd prefer to actually have the detectives discover something (or work at it at least), rather than have the clues walk into his office because they couldn't keep their secrets anymore, or have it revealed as an aside by one of his colleagues. What exactly does Wexford do besides sit at his desk and think; or walk out to lunch (which is either Chinese or a sandwich); or talk to Burden and ask questions that the reader lazily knows will be revealed at the end anyway? Not once does the author even try to give a hint as to where this is all going. It feels like a cul de sac until the key individuals give themselves up (almost right at the end of the book, take note) and reveal all - now, you tell me, is that supposed to be "exciting"?

[Harry Connolly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book 12 of #15in2015

Wow. This was sort of terrible.

Rendell died recently, and the way her obituaries described her work made me want to sample it. The sensible thing would have been for me to carefully select a much-lauded novel, but instead I grabbed something at random on the shelf.

The characters were cliches: an absent-minded professor, a snotty supermodel, misogynistic Christian fundamentalists, the overweight guy who can't resist a sweet cake in the most awkward of social circumstances. The plot dawdled, in part because of characters who find a body but don't report it because of the bother it would cause them (missing children? So what?) and in part because there's so little going on.

Worse, there are continual little author self-inserts that make no sense in the context of the rest of the book. Stuff like (paraphrasing) "The inspector had forgotten to ask an important question, and it would be weeks before he realized what it was" which doesn't match the bulk of the novel, but seems very like a ham-fisted attempt to create tension.

Finally, it's apparent from the latter part of the book that the author had a lovely vacation abroad, and much of the denouement made it tax-deductible.

Maybe her earlier work was more nuanced and interesting. Maybe it had momentum. This doesn't.

[Selva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was going through a reading slump, so thought why not a good old murder mystery to rev things up. It partly did the trick for I managed to complete it. Otherwise, I found it to be slightly boring and disappointing. It is hard to write a review of a murder mystery without dissecting the plot and giving away spoilers. I can only say that certain elements/subplots worked for me and certain things didn't. Also, I thought it was a case of Ruth Rendell winking at the readers and thinking let me twist a few familiar tropes of a mystery here. Think Ruth Rendell has a liking for dysfunctional families to be the core of her plots...I have read only one more book of her and it centered around the same aspect. I mean the similarity was striking. As much as I like Rendell's smooth writing and intricate phycological aspects of her plot, I think I prefer Patricia Cornwell though I have had a hit and miss history with her too.

So, not bad but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.

P.S: Does it rain continuously for 3 months in any part of England? In this novel, It does and it annoyed the hell out of me.

[Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

75 pages in, 3 people are missing and all that is discussed is the rain.
I’m done.

[Pupottina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una lettura può essere anche rilassante oltre che avvincente. Può sembrare che le due sensazioni si escludano, ma in un romanzo di Ruth Rendell, come in uno di Agatha Christie, si amalgamano alla perfezione. SOLI NEL BOSCO è un nuovo capolavoro di Ruth Rendell, dove le vicende si evolvono in un crescendo, rivelando segreti di famiglia e questioni religiose.
Già dalle prime pagine l'interesse si incentra sulla misteriosa sparizione di Giles e Sophie, fratelli e adolescenti che un alluvione ha avvolto nel nulla. Un caso di cronaca che coinvolge la collettività dove indaga l'ispettore capo Wexford.
Sophie e Giles sono scomparsi. I due adolescenti erano stati affidati dai genitori a una tata e, al loro rientro da un weekend a Parigi, dei tre nessuna traccia. La signora Dade non ha dubbi: i suoi figli sono morti, annegati. Un’ipotesi per nulla bizzarra, considerato che il diluvio in corso, con piogge mai così torrenziali a memoria d’uomo in quella parte del Sussex, ha provocato l’esondazione dei fiumi e nemmeno un edificio nella valle è scampato alla furia delle acque. Lo sa bene anche l’ispettore capo Wexford, su a Kingsmarkham, dove la piena montante ha per ora risparmiato la sua casa, ma lambisce ormai l’estremità del giardino. Ecco perché non è strano che venga subito inviata una squadra di sommozzatori alla ricerca dei corpi. Più strano semmai è che i ragazzi siano davvero affogati pur essendo entrambi abili nuotatori, e per di più lontano dalla zona allagata. È solo l’inizio di un’indagine oscura, disturbante, che costringerà Wexford a mettere in discussione le sue più solide certezze sulla società in cui vive, e perfino sulla sua stessa famiglia. Andando oltre la fredda analisi di come e perché un crimine viene commesso, per esplorare i modi in cui la violenza infetta e distrugge chiunque tocchi.
Un perfetto capolavoro del genere giallo.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Babes In The Wood by Ruth Rendell.

Inspector Wexford and people living in the Kingsmarkham area are experiencing the worst flooding in recent memory. The rains keep coming and are over flooding the banks of the Brede River. Wexford is notified of a missing person(s)alert for a baby sitter (Ms Troy) and two siblings in her care (Giles & Sophie). Since no trace has yet to be found of them why is the mother so certain they are all dead?

Another excellently written Inspector Wexford novel by Ruth Rendell but for me a little too (unnecessarily) long.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I normally really like Ruth Rendell and her mysteries but this one fell short. For some inexplicable reason, she decided to ruin a perfectly good story with strange feminist interjections and then a blatant anti-Christianity blib. It rang false in the novel and also for her detective, Inspector Wexford.
I finished the novel because I really did want to know "who did it" but wish I hadn't.

[Renee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I believe the term is "plodding." There's just no energy behind the plot or the characters.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely detailed police procedural set in the capital of Rendell-Land, Kingsmartin. Wexler and Burden are joined by a few other detectives, including Sargent Barry Vine (Rendell's pen name for her non-Wexler books is Barbara Vine) and a couple of redoubtable female detective constables. Three people have disappeared--two young teenagers and the woman who has minding them for the evening while their parents were in London--and after a while are presumed dead. There is a memorable cast of unsavory characters--parents, friends, religious fanatics, teachers--many of whom are the type you would not want to spend more than a few minutes.

As with many of Rendell's books the mystery itself, while not apparent until the end, is less important than the investigation and the revelations of the rotten core of much of what she sees as contemporary English society.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The twists and turns in this story were incredible. Nothing is as it seems when 2 teenagers and their 30 something babysitter go missing during unprecedented winter floods. Wexford must deal with rising water, family tension, a missing persons case, and completely repugnant parents while still watching his diet.

[Whistler's Mom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Catching a favorite author on an off day.

I normally love Rendell's books featuring Inspector Reg Wexford and his staff. Rendell was a superb writer and all her books are worth reading, but her non-series books can be disturbing and depressing. The Wexford books have Rendell's brutally realistic take on life, but Wexford and his colleagues and family bring humor and normality to their stories. Kingsmarkam isn't paradise, but there is hope and love and friendship to leaven the grimness of crime. Somehow this one doesn't measure up although the story itself is a reasonably good mystery with some memorable characters.

In an upscale neighborhood, a couple has returned home from a short vacation to find their teenaged son and daughter are missing, along with the family friend who was staying with them. The Dades are a spectacularly unappealing couple. She's neurotic and unbalanced. He's arrogant and rude. Discounting his wife, he devotes himself to his job and to bullying his children.

Cops can't afford to ignore the possibility that a missing teen is a runaway, even from a loving, happy home. With the Dade teens it seems like a good bet, but where is the woman who was "teen-sitting" them? Grandparents, school mates, and neighbors are all questioned, but still days go by and there's no sign of the missing ones.

In a town nearby, a middle-aged businessman walks the grounds of his weekend home. From humble beginnings, his success has earned him a lovely town house, an impressive country estate, and a much-younger wife. Sharonne is a stunningly beautiful model with a powerful, controlling personality. Her husband is desperate to hold onto her and when she decides against reporting a rank-smelling car hidden on their property, he obeys meekly. When the car and body are found, the Iron Lady is unaffected, but her hen-pecked husband is a murder suspect.

To round out the motif of miserable marriages, Wexford's oldest daughter and her husband have finally split up for good. She has a new live-in lover and her father can't stand the guy. Sylvia is the family feminist and Rendell never seems to be able to decide if that's good or bad. Wexford sees red flags in the new boyfriend's behavior, but his daughter is a middle-aged professional and (as a social worker and women's advocate) surely must know the ropes. He keeps his mouth shut and concentrates on the flooding all over the area, including his own backyard. Is climate change making England unlivable?

Then there's the strange religious cult that ignores everything but sexual misdeeds. "Living a Pure Life" is a rare message in the year 2002, but some people like the combination of rigid rules and dramatic out-casting of demons. In England religious freedom is guaranteed, but what if a fervent believer decides to rid the world of sinners?

It's a book that just misses. There are some fine characters, but too many of them. It seems like the author couldn't decide on a theme. She takes a swing at global warming, sexual predators, domestic abuse, over-bearing parents, and religion run-amok without doing much damage to any of them. The story goes off in too many directions and the attempts to take a stand on important social issues sound forced and unnatural.

Even the characters we've come to know and like don't act like themselves. Wexford and Detective Mike Burden bicker constantly. Not affectionately and comfortably, but with a bitter edge to it. The young police woman assigned to the unit is in awe of Wexford's brilliance, but scared to open her mouth because of his harsh attitude toward her. It's like Rendell is trying to mold Wexford in the image of PD James' Commander Dalgliesh. One Adam Dalgliesh is plenty.

For any other writer, it would be a decent book. For Rendell, it's disappointing.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another great masterpiece written by Dame Rendell.

4* Going Wrong
4* The Keys to the Street
3* The Fever Tree and Other Stories
4* A Judgement in Stone
3* Fall of the Coin
4* People Don't Do Such Things
3* The Girl Next Door
2* To Fear a Painted Devil
3* Dark Corners
3* Live Flesh

Inspector Wexford series
3* Shake Hands Forever (Inspector Wexford, #9)
3* The Veiled One (Inspector Wexford, #14)
4* Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (Inspector Wexford, #15)
3* Harm Done (Inspector Wexford, #18)
3* The Babes in the Wood (Inspector Wexford, #19)
TR From Doon With Death (Inspector Wexford, #1)
TR A New Lease of Death (Inspector Wexford, #2)
TR Wolf to the Slaughter (Inspector Wexford, #3)
TR The Best Man to Die (Inspector Wexford, #4)
TR A Guilty Thing Surprised (Inspector Wexford, #5)
TR No More Dying Then (Inspector Wexford, #6)
TR Murder Being Once Done (Inspector Wexford, #7)
TR Some Lie and Some Die (Inspector Wexford, #8)
TR A Sleeping Life (Inspector Wexford, #10)
TR Death Notes (Inspector Wexford, #11)
TR Speaker of Mandarin (Inspector Wexford, #12)
TR An Unkindness of Ravens (Inspector Wexford, #13)
TR Simisola (Inspector Wexford, #16)
TR Road Rage (Inspector Wexford, #17)
TR End in Tears (Inspector Wexford, #20)
TR Not in the Flesh (Inspector Wexford, #21)
TR The Monster in the Box (Inspector Wexford, #22)
TR The Vault (Inspector Wexford, #23)
TR No Man's Nightingale (Inspector Wexford #24)

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently read that Ruth Rendell has published her last Inspector Wexford novel (The Monster in the Box} and realized that I had a little catching up to do. In Babes in the Wood, Rendell comes closer to her standalone psychological suspense novels (some of which she publishes as Barbara Vine) than I recall her doing in past Wexford books. It seems that each family in this book is more dysfunctional than the next. Wexford and Burden must also deal with a fundamentalist church and with heavy rains and flooding that muddy the waters in more ways than one. I'm not a big fan of psychological suspense novels filled with deviants of one kind and another, so if this melding of Rendell's writing styles continues, I may be glad to see the series end, but Rendell is still a master writer and the book held my interest to the end.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 bit far-fetched but I don't really care.

[Diane · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book should be forgotten. I hated every character in this book, but most especially Wexford. Beyond blaming victims of domestic violence (I'm sorry but what the hell happened to Ruth Rendell that she felt this was an important thing to include in this book - it literally has no relationship to the mystery and doesn't add anything to the story), he is pretentious and patronizing. Rendell also decides to not provide us with any primary female characters that we can actually like. And the conclusion of the mystery is perhaps one of the most ridiculous I have read. There was no redemption for the terrible characters by the plot, instead I literally threw my book across the room when I realized what she had decided was the end. Garbage.

[✘✘ Sarah ✘✘ (former Nefarious Breeder of Murderous Crustaceans) · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a long time since I last read a novel by Ruth Rendell and I found this one enjoyable enough. The book dragged on a bit however, especially as Inspector Wexford had to revisit the same witnesses/suspects over and over again for further questioning. Still, Ruth Rendell is a very talented writer and I always enjoy her style very much.

[Cybercrone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good story as usual, but some just very strange things that I have no idea why her editor didn't pick up on. They just grated.

For instance, in one section there was a comment made by Wexford that all three of the supposed victims' passports were at their (own)homes, so somehow that was supposed to mean that the abductor/murderer must be foreign and had left the country.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dra-a-a-a-ag it out, why don't you?

[Andrew Pender-Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read a number of Ruth Rendell's works, including some of her Inspector Wexford mysteries, and have enjoyed them all. This one was no exception, but it could have done with some judicious pruning to have produced a more tightly written work. Though there was plenty of intrigue, and the author's gift of being able to create fully fleshed, believable characters is there, there was altogether either too much going on or whole scenes were overly written which, at times, detracted from the overall pace of the work. Nonetheless, still well worth reading.