Vanity Dies Hard

by Ruth Rendell

Wealthy Alice Whittaker -- now Alice Fielding -- is known for her generosity, and when her friend Nesta vanishes Alice is determined to find her and help her. If that means money, well, Alice has plenty of it.
Then Alice starts to feel sick -- a virus perhaps, something she just can't shake. Her handsome husband, who is ten years younger than she is, seems determined to keep her at home. Does he just want her to feel better? Or is he trying to keep her from finding Nesta?
Ill though she is, Alice can't help asking questions. And the more she learns about Nesta's disappearance, the more certain she becomes that her own life is in peril....

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Mystery Thriller, British Literature, Audiobook, 20th Century

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

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

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wealthy Alice tries to visit a friend, but the friend is missing. She starts asking questions, but then gets this illness she can't shake, and her younger husband wants her to stay home, and she can't help but feel a little suspicious.

Old fashioned, but not bad.

[Bruce Beckham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the e-book; it was narrated verbatim by Eva Haddon, and quite competently, I thought.

I was immediately intrigued by the opening chapter, in which Alice, the rather dowdy protagonist, travels to a small country town to visit a former neighbour, glamorous Nesta, only to find that the address via which they have been corresponding does not exist.

Alice is a wealthy heiress; her family owns and runs the firm for which her husband, ten years her junior, now works. As Alice begins to search for Nesta she appears to become progressively unwell. Tensions develop amongst her circle of male acquaintances, guardians and advisors.

Alice begins to imagine that Nesta has met with some sinister fate, and that the perpetrator might be behind her own illness – but in whom can she confide? There is evidence to suggest that any one of husband Andrew, brother Hugo, uncle Justin, old flame and GP Harry – and even local businessman, Mr Feast – might have had dallied with the flamboyant Nesta.

The suspense is maintained throughout, and Ruth Rendell employs her mystery-writing skills to hold back both climax and denouement until close to the end.

Recommended.

[Jaksen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had this book in a pile yet to be read, from some I bought at a book fair.

Now, I love Ms. Rendell, esp. her Inspector Wexford series. I ate them up and loved every one. Reg Wexford's a bit of a curmudgeon, for sure, but an 'enlightened one.' However, some of her stand-alone novels are just so-so. This is one of them.

Alice Whittaker, who married 'late' and to a 'much younger man,' is missing her good friend Nesta, who just sort of disappeared. Alice goes looking for Nesta down side-streets and old addresses, talking to strangers, the police, her husband and just about anyone who'll listen to her - all to no avail. There's various dropped hints that maybe someone in Alice or Nesta's circle might have done something to her. Murder? Kidnapping? Or did Nesta do something which made her want to simply vanish away? (Mysterious elopement, perhaps?)

Well, the novel runs along these lines for quite a while, and there's also suggestions that all might not be well in Alice's own marriage, cuz after all, she, an old spinster at thirty-nine, married an attractive young man who's only thirty-one. (Yep, that stereotype rears its silly, ugly head.)

Suffice to say there are twists and more twists and I was let down by the conclusion. Not the best, IMO, of Ms. Rendell's large body of work, but that doesn't mean I won't keep reading her. I've still a good dozen or more of her books I've yet to read!

Three stars

[Greg · Rating 1 out of 5]

DAME AGATHA CHRISTIE AND HER PEERS
BOOK 66 -1966
Some books are indeed written as part of a contract to deliver 'X' amount of words/books. This must be one of them.
CAST - 1 star: Alice is a late-thirties, wealthy, semi-attractive woman. She snags Andrew, a guy nine years younger, very handsome but with no money. He likes to lay around and read. She likes to give him gifts...like a sports car, just little things like that. Nesta is Alice's friend who has disappeared. Nesta is rather fat and looks sick. But Alice thinks Andrew is hot for Nesta. I kid you not. Andrew likes the $$$!!! And Andrew does like to read Trollope, so there is that as a plus. The local doctor keeps saying to Alice, "No, you are just...." and then says, "Alice, you are simply..." and then, "But Alice, listen to me, it's only..." But someone always interupts him.*
ATMOSPHERE - 2: Alice lives in a massive old house that's a bit creepy. She hears repetitive clacking. Is it a typewriter composing fake love letters from Andrew to Nesta? No, but Alice has the brains of a doorknob. And old, filthy doorknob from, say, the dark ages of 1960's decor.
CRIME - Minus 1 star: Ah, ....ummm....I don't know. Is the 'youghurt' poisoned?
INVESTIGATION - Alice refuses to get the cops involved to find Nesta.... why? Cause she, Alice, thinks the cops will think she is silly. (The cops are right.) Alice runs around in the dark for a while during a storm...and THEN!!!...
RESOLUTION: 1 star: Yea, right. As if we're supposed to think Andrew is straight and madly in love...
SUMMARY: 1.0 stars. This is one of the worst 'mysteries' I've ever read. It's just silly, and not in a fun way. Rendell must have had this one boxed up in a cellar, never to be published. But if you MUST read this at gunpoint, go ahead. Otherwise, no, no, no.
*Alice is, of course, pregnant. I assume the word must have been prohibited in England in 1966. Or something.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best Rendell I have read. The ending was a bit of a letdown. Alice Whittaker is 37, wealthy but a bit plain and has no career. She see’s her life as a failure except that she is rich. Along comes schoolteacher Andrew Fielding, handsome and fixated about Anthony Trollope novels. He is 9 years younger than her and they marry.

Her best friend came into her life Nesta, disappears and she goes in search of her discovering that her brother, uncle, husband and doctor all have motives to murder her. She also suddenly becomes ill and increasingly paranoid that someone is poisoning her.

The ending reveals all and a bit dull. Basically everyone lives happily ever after.

[The Cruciverbalistic Bookworm]

3.5⭐
A Ruth Rendell standalone with a happy instead of a shocking ending, which isn't her usual style. I had enjoyed the read mostly, until the disappointing twist at the end.
However, though her theme may seem outdated and her characters shallow, obsessive or neurotic, the enticing quality of her slowly-flowing-towards-disaster prose always conquers me; I remain a die-hard fan!

[Clare Snow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update 4 Sept 2019:

Someone tells me I read this a year ago. In theory, I agree. As usual my review gives me no clue as to what I read. Who thinks I should reread? Or accept one Rendell bleeds into the next, even when I 4 star it. Ok, re(listen) it is. I've drunk the Rendell/Vine well dry - back to the start. But Wexford can stay in the grave he dug for himself.

*******************

"A man may smile and murder while he smiles."

A clever concept, and if you can get past the 1960s sexism, a well executed mystery. Quite different from Rendell's usual who-dunnit.

But seriously, a woman is allowed to marry a younger man, even when she's an ancient spinster at 38!? And I cannot believe that no one would work out Alice was pregnant. Even if her doctor is that dense, her sister-in-law would have suggested it.

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an ok story, with an old fashioned feel, which passed time nicely...

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in July 1999.

In general, Ruth Rendell's Wexford novels are better than the others; Vanity Dies Hard is an exception to this. It is perhaps rather over-extended, a problem that frequently seems to afflict Rendell; it is too much a one idea piece of work to be a top class novel. However, it is gripping, and the idea is very interesting, an unusual variation on the 'woman's fears that something strange is going on are dismissed as hysterical' theme.

Alice Whittaker is rich and beautiful, recently married to a younger man, but still terribly insecure. Her close friend Nesta Drage has recently moved away, but the letters received from her are strange - and type written (a skill Nesta does not possess). Sensing something wrong, Alice goes in search of Nesta, only to discover that her letters have been going to a non-existent address. This makes the fact that she received replies to them seem really strange, and prompts further investigation. When Alice begins to be sick after every meal, she becomes convinced that Nesta was poisoned, and that her murderer is now poisoning Alice's own food.

Since all this is familiar territory for the thriller genre - it is the ending which is unusual about this story - it could be sketched in far more quickly with at least equal effectiveness. Rendell introduces episode after episode to increase our belief that Alice is indeed hysterical, but that on the other hand something is going on. The writing is skilful enough that negative reactions only occur on reflection by the reader. While actually reading the novel, you are drawn in. The fact that the book is over-extended, and the subsidiary faults which make this the case (Alice is a little too hysterical to be believable, the sequence of events which convince her that someone is trying to kill her a little too fantastic) are only obvious later.

[Ronald Wilcox · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good gothic novel. Alice's friend Nesta has seemed to have disappeared. Alice is trying to find her after she moved away, first going to the address she had for her and finding it did not exist then tracking her to boarding place in London. In the meantime, Alice is beginning to feel ill frequently with nausea and begins to suspect someone is poisoning her. Although the first half of the novel is kind of slow, the suspense building as we see more of what Alice imagines in the second half made the book enjoyable.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an unusual Ruth Rendell in that no one dies - though this isn't clear until the end. Not as good as some Rendell's - perhaps it is just that the idea that women had to be good looking and couldn't attract a younger man is a bit out dated. I did guess some of the clues - that Alice is not being poisoned but is pregnant for instance. Some of the plotting seems a bit pedestrian too.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this from the dollar shelf at the used book store, and it was definitely a dollar's worth of entertainment, though not more. It was a gag book: Rendell sets up a load of tension just to let the air out of the whole lot in the last twenty pages. But for a dollar on a gloomy afternoon, it was fine.

[Ange]

I actually just watched the movie. Well done and had me fooled.

[Madge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favourite Rendell, sadly.

[Pedro Alexandre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vaidade Fatal, de Ruth Rendell, é um thriller psicológico envolvente que explora as complexidades da mente humana. Neste romance, acompanhamos Alice Whittaker, uma mulher tímida e ingénua, cuja vida tranquila começa a desmoronar quando percebe que algo de sinistro parece ter acontecido com a amiga de longa data Nesta Drage. À medida que as suas suspeitas crescem, Alice vê-se enredada numa rede de dúvidas e inquietações, onde cada relação se torna um potencial perigo. As inseguranças de Alice levam-na a questionar a realidade e a sanidade das suas perceções.

Uma leitura que nos prende do início ao fim, oferecendo um retrato inquietante da mente de uma mulher em conflito consigo mesma e com o seu mundo.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Wendy Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun to read but a little odd and very outdated. I can now understand why it was difficult to buy. Could only find it secondhand in a triple book from 1993. I am reading her books in order and this was one of the few I had never read. If you want proof that feminism has changed the world give this one a read.

[Alessandra Gennaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tre stelle, se paragonata a se stessa.
Cinque, se confrontata con il giallo al femminile di questi ultimi anni, che da questa vera Maestra ha solo che da imparare-e pure tanto
Quattro di media, per una lettura sempre godibile e avvincente

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an intriguing read.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ruth Rendall makes you believe anything can happen in ordinary lives. I enjoy her portrayal and descriptions of the inner mind, emotions and vagaries of the human condition.

[Sheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was Rendell's third novel, published in. 1966, and the tone feels more recognisably Rendellian than its predecessors. It's definitely in the genre of domestic psychological thriller, and reminded me a little of Celia Fremlin's tense, claustrophobic brand of domestic noir. (If you like this sort of thing, and haven't read Fremlin, seek her out!)

Alice, a wealthy, if dowdy, woman of thirty-eight (which she seems to consider exceedingly elderly), recently married to the considerably younger Andrew, is worrying about her friend Nesta Drage, a young widow, who recently left the area. (Alice, who has no job and no role in the family firm, hasn't much else to think about, to be fair.) The address Nesta left doesn't seem to exist, which is weird because Alice has not only been writing to her there but also receiving answers. Digging further and becoming increasingly convinced that Nesta is dead, Alice becomes ever more mistrustful of those around her - her husband, her brother, her uncle, her friends... What has happened to Nesta, and is someone really ruthlessly determined to stop Alice from finding out?

The characterisation is good - Nesta in particular, though mainly absent, is easy to visualise from others' impressions of her. It was pretty obvious what was going on with Alice, although it hardly seemed to occur to anybody.

I did dimly remember having read this before, though not the details. I knew I'd enjoyed it, though, and I enjoyed it this time too. It's probably my favourite of the three books in my Rendell reread thus far. Also, the title - Vanity Dies Hard - is good (though not the American title, which was apparently In Sickness and in Health. Wasn't that a sitcom?)

Next up, the second Wexford book, A New Lease of Death.

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Careful, there will be spoilers to the whole tone of the book. Better to read it cold.


Readers build expectations of plot development based on things like genre of publication, how many pages are left to the ending, even book cover and of course blurb. Ruth Rendell, in her earlier books broke a lot of these rules of what a mystery or thriller is. The best example is the justly famous A Judgment in Stone, where we are told on the very first sentence who did what to whom, when and why, breaking what is probably the ultimate rule of the mystery genre. This is much more quietly revolutionary, but it seemed revolutionary to me, and also satirical of genre expectactions. She fooled me completely by having me project the stereotypes I expected into and then following real world probabilities after all. She wrote greater novels, but this one has got a special place in my memory and affections for being so quietly twisted and making me self analyze what I expect of what book.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was just what I'd expect of a short mystery story from the 60's. Not to mention British.
I couldn't care much for the plot because the author doesn't bother to make you like the characters. The story itself is unappealing and boring. I couldn't help thinking "who cares?" whenever something happened. Stupid, pointless, and uninteresting. Also, it was too theatrical. The drama seemed forced. It was just really, really lame. I should have read something else. I guess I just read it because it was sitting there, and the name looked interesting. I don't regret it too much 'cause it's short, but still. Don't read it.
It's not really worthy of a review, either.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ruth Rendell died a few months ago, but I still have a number of her books on my to-read list, including Dark Corners, set to come out next month. Vanity Dies Hard is one of her early thrillers, and it’s a good one. Alice, recently married to a younger man, is worried about her friend, Nesta, who seems to have vanished. At first, it seems to be just a case of mixed-up addresses, but as Alice asks questions of her friends, she finds out that Nesta had a lot to hide. Even Alice’s old uncle might have been caught up in her schemes! And now Alice herself is suffering mysterious symptoms of illness – could it be that someone is poisoning her to keep her from the truth?

[Jill H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Ruth Rendell's books....I like them a lot..........but not this one. It just doesn't read like a Rendell book and hasn't much mystery to it. Basically it is the story of a woman who has left her village and then "disappeared". Her friend becomes suspicious and thinks that she may have been murdered. But is the friend just an hysteric or is there something afoot? The solution is less than satisfying and there you have it. Not one of Rendell's best by any means.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early Rendell. Classic suspense. I love the early Rendells because they so crystallize how the world has changed in so little time. The twist ending wouldn't be feasible today, but it's perfect for her setting (and I totally guessed the outcome!).

[Lili · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have yet to read a poor Ruth Rendell mystery. in fact I have enjoyed reading them all. Not all at once but over the years.

[Aleisha Zolman · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really loved how this story surprised me at the end. an intrigue of the best kind. i would recommend it to everyone!

[Ange · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe read it before. Saw the video on this story. Think the video's ending is different. As always, enjoyed it.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story was quite good and, I know, the times are changed since the sixties which is when the novel was written but I didn't like the women's representation AT ALL.

[Joanna Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well I wasn't expecting that ending 😂