The Fallen Curtain and Other Stories

by Ruth Rendell

A stranger lures a child into his car with the promise of sweets. A young man spots his fiancee's double in a public park of ill repute. An executive visits the secluded home of a former employee whose intentions are frightfully unclear. A modest soul weds the woman he rescues from suicide--only to fall victim to an unfathomable form of possessiveness?. In the eleven tales gathered in The Fallen Curtain, Ruth Rendell lays bare the twisted inner workings of the unbalanced mind.

Genres: Mystery, Short Stories, Crime, Fiction, Suspense, British Literature, Mystery Thriller

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

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

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are compelling short stories, but very dark. Once I started reading one, I had to finish it. I hate when the good meet terrible ends which happens here a few times. Mostly bad people meet other bad people and both suffer.

[Joanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully entertaining stories. These doomed and murdering characters, animal lover, sex hater, compulsive cleaner, held my attention through every story.

[Cameron Trost · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another perfect collection of short suspense tales from the late Ruth Rendell. This collection includes my favourite tale of Rendell's short tales, The Venus Fly Trap. 'The Fallen Curtain', 'The Fever Tree', and 'Piranha to Scurfy' are three of the best short story collections I have ever read. If you haven't delved into Rendell's world yet, find any one of these three collections, lock the doors, and lose yourself.

[Eduardo Vardheren · Rating 5 out of 5]

La obra de esta autora ha sido todo un tremendo hallazgo. La encontré de casualidad buscando libros con el título planta y al iniciar con el cuento (que en español da título a la antología) me encontré una tremenda historia sobre la condición del lado más oscuro de la humanidad sostenida sobre un símil simbólico ejecutado de forma magistral. Leí los demás relatos y en cada uno hallé historias desgarradoras sobre el deseo, el miedo, la pasión y lo humano. Incluso (si nos ponemos ñoños académicos) una muestra de cómo hacer intertextualidad al crear una obra sobre las bases de otra y que igual sea una tragedia. Este libro de Ruth Rendell se ha vuelto uno de mis referentes de cabecera.

[Mrs. Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the [mystery] writers who died in recent years - Westlake, Block, "McBain," Grafton, etc. - none has been as painful a loss as Rendell. Some of her books stood out for their clever plots, but it was her writing style which made them worth rereading and rereading again. The title story of The Fallen Curtain is a an example of how she provides the undramatic framework on which the reader builds, deciding for himself the shape of the horror and its perpetrator.

Rendell is rightly famed for her penetrating insight and her ability to construct/illuminate characters whose thinking (and hence behavior) differs profoundly from what we think of as normal. That said, I acknowledge my similarity to "Almost Human"’s Dick. "Did scum like that ever pause to think of the sufferings of the trapped animals, left to die in agony just to have their pelts stuck on some rich bastard’s throat?" You and I can share a padded cell, Dick.

April, 2024: picked up The Fallen Curtain just to check on something, ended up re-reading the whole thing once again. There was no one better than Rendell at her best. This collection of short stories would provide a fine introduction to her work for those not yet familiar with it. RECOMMENDED.

[Carol Fenlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured these stories, even though some of them I had seen as TV adaptations in the Ruth rendell series. Rendell is definitely a master of psychological fiction and I much prefer her short stories and stand alone novels to her detective series, although these are also good. In each one there is a dreadful sense of menace, of something coming but you're never quite sure what. Even though they are an easy read compared to some literary stories, they still contain layers of meaning with regard to human behaviour and motivation. As a writer myself, I admire Rendell so much it sometimes spoils my reading experience because I am analysing her prose as I go along. If only I could write stories like her, sigh.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eleven short stories that deal with individuals suffering from mental illness and unbalanced personalities. These tales by a master storyteller are plausible enough to keep readers awake at night.

[Miglė · Rating 5 out of 5]

Šitas apsakymų rinkinys buvo truputį spooky, nors nieko antgamtiško čia nebuvo, vien tik kažkoks esminis žmogiškos prigimties atgrasumas.
Man, žinoma, labai patiko.
Apsakymų premisos:

1. The Fallen Curtain - vyriškį dar vaikystėje buvo pagrobęs kažkoks vyras, o jis nieko neatsimena. Kaip gi jis su tuo tvarkysis?
2. People Don't Do Such Things - pora susidraugauja su mergišiumi rašytoju, o jo istorijos paįvarina anų nuobodoką kasdienybę.
3. A Bad Heart - pavaldinį atleidęs godus verslininkas sutinka pas atleistąjį darbuotoją pavakarieniauti, o ta vakarienė jam ima atrodyti kažkokia įtartina.
4. You Can't Be Too Careful - jauna moteris obsesyviai bijo įsilaužėlių, bet privalo susirasti butokę, kad sugebėtų toliau mokėti nuomą. Kaip priversti butokę laikytis visų jos taisyklių ir nepasirodyti išprotėjusiai?
5. The Double - labai gera ir creepy istorija. Jaunuolis parke pamato moterį, kuri labai panaši į jo sužadėtinę, tik vyresnė. Sužadėtinė prietaringa ir mano, kad sutikti antrininkę - tai nelaimė.
6. The Venus Fly Trap - viena nepakenčiama pagyvenusi ponia visur tamposi kitą, kuklesnę, ir nuolatos demonstruoja savo pranašumą.
7. The Clinging Woman - jaunuolis išgelbsti merginą nuo savižudybės ir ta jam labai dėkinga.
8. The Vinegar Mother - labai gražiai, kaip vaikystės prisiminimas, parašyta istorija apie tragediją draugės namuose.
9. The Fall of a Coin - vyras ir žmona nekenčia vienas kito ir apsistoja kokiame tai prastame viešbučio kambarėlyje.
10. Almost Human - samdomas žudikas nekenčia žmonių, bet labai myli šunis.
11. Divided We Stand - viena iš seserų paaukojo savo karjerą, kad prižiūrėtų sergančią piktą motiną, ir nori, kad dabar motinos priežiūrą perimtų kitą, bet ši nenori.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 1981 copyrighted paperback is a collection of eleven short stories written by Ruth Rendell. Most of these stories were published in the Ellery Queen mystery magazine in the early to mid 1970's.
The stories range from mystery to the macabre, with some wit and dark humor. I didn't realize these were short stories when I picked this one out. As a collector, this is one I will keep. I did enjoy most of the stories. Think along the lines of the Twilight Zone and you'll have a fair idea of what type of stories these were.
I'm not a big fan of short story collections for the most part, but this one was interesting as a novelty sort of thing.
Overall a C+

[Watchdogg · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Fallen Curtain by Ruth Rendell
I read the title story in a collection first published in 1976

When Richard was 8 years old, he disappeared for several hours leading to panic at home and a frantic search by the police. When he turns up unhurt everything is fine until he mentions he went for a ride with a man in his car. His mother assumes he was molested, even though there is no physical evidence to corroborate that. By the time he is 18, Richard is haunted by those events, even though he still remembers nothing. When he visits the site where his troubles all began and sees a young boy playing there, he invites the lad to go for a ride in his car. Slowly, he begins to recall the events of that fateful day.

My thoughts -
We warn our children to avoid strangers, especially those offering some candy or seeking help locating a missing puppy. In this tense version of possible version of these circumstances, you will find yourself on the edge of your seat with anticipation. Does the young man intend to inflict harm on the young similar to what may have happened to him or is something else brewing. Nicely done and therefore 3 solid stars in accordance with my rating system - Good - better than average.

[G.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rendell is one of my heroes. Every story in this collection is different, every one a gem.
And the last one in the collection? Completely chilling.

[Teaspoon Stories · Rating 4 out of 5]

The surprise for me was that these aren’t cosy murder mysteries or satisfying who-dunnits. They’re sinister and deeply unsettling pathologies that probe the dark underside of humanity - the grotesque, the abnormal and the perverse hiding in plain sight in our everyday lives.


The Fallen Curtain

One of the really scary things when I was small was what used to be called a public service advert warning children not to talk to strangers. All I remember about it was the deep menacing voice and the chill that it cast across my cosy teatime television.

Teachers and grown-ups were also always warning you not to accept sweets from strangers, or most dangerous of all, to get in a stranger’s car.

It’s weird that this short story was written at pretty much the same time that the scary tv message was being broadcast. What was it about the 1970s that bred these dark fears of child abduction? By the 1980s we’d moved on, to the constant terror of nuclear annihilation, but in the 1970s unspeakable horrors lurked behind every offer of sweeties or a car ride.

And so I was thoroughly unsettled by this short story, as it dredged up these memories. The awful chasm between the snug safety of tea at gran’s (tinned peaches and fizzy lemonade, p5) and the temptation of chocolate from a stranger’s car.

And yet nothing does go wrong. The unspeakableness is in our own (and Richard’s mum’s) imagination. The curtain of the title falls away and Richard suddenly remembers what actually happened when he was six: a kind lonely man treated him to fish and chips, and then a game of hide and seek in the park. Richard does the same now with eight year-old Barry. It should be touching - and a huge relief. Perhaps this was how it felt in the 1970s when, well, the worst didn’t happen after all.

But by the 2020s we’re no longer conditioned to believe in innocent motives. We judge everyone and everything against a strict test of appropriateness. And Richard’s behaviour - a grown man with a boy - is disturbingly “inappropriate”. And so the ending leaves you feeling queasy and grubby, and uncomfortably complicit.


People Don’t Do Such Things

A dull suburban bookkeeper exacting the ultimate perfect revenge on his literary client - I wonder what Ruth Randell’s own accountant made of this story! It’s written in the first person so we never actually get to know the accountant’s name - only those of the over-sexed novelist (Reeve Baker) who seduces and then ditches the accountant’s wife, Gwendoline.

The accountant’s splendid revenge - killing his wife and successfully pinning the murder on her seducer - has a kind of Shakespearean flamboyance to it. Who’d have guessed a boring bookkeeper would ever have been capable of such drama? After all, “People don’t do such things”, as the short story’s title (quoting Ibsen) reminds us. Only they do. As Ruth Rendell darkly reminds us.


A Bad Heart

Ruth Rendell continues to channel Shakespeare in this short story that re-tells the drama of Macbeth in a creepy modern context.

King Duncan is the arrogant self-made businessman, Duncan Fraser, who ignominiously sacks his useless side-kick Hugo Crouch (the Macbeth character). Hugo’s wife Elizabeth later invites Duncan to dinner, ostensibly to show no hard feelings.

But there clearly are hard feelings aplenty, even though initially they’re only expressed passive-aggressively in the form of the icy reception and miserable fare that greets Duncan when he arrives at Castle Macbeth (actually the Crouch’s creepy house in the middle of a rain-sodden Epping Forest).

If the hospitality is chilly that’s nothing, though, compared to the full-on horror show that comes next. Creaking floorboards, banging doors, whispering in the dark, and a ghoulish presence creeping into the dank sepulchre of the guest-bedroom where Duncan reluctantly has to spend the night after his car’s tampered with and he can’t get home.

Woah! This is like my worst nightmare of staying overnight somewhere. The sinister sounds, the strange goings-on along the corridor, lights you daren’t turn on and toilets you can’t flush lest you wake the household. Uh! It seems to me that Ruth Rendell is confirming my deepest fears of accepting hospitality, by proving that a meal and a bed in a strange house is more terrifying than any Shakespearean horror!


You Can’t Be Too Careful

I love the way Ruth Rendell manipulates you so cleverly that, without realising, you start identifying and sympathising with the character who ends up being the psychopathic killer!

This happened to me totally in this particular short story. I rather liked the sound of brisk, no nonsense Della Galway. I liked her hard work and her ambition and her refusal to conform in a man’s world.

I also very much associated with her security consciousness. Nothing wrong at all with enjoying the protective reassurance of multiple locks and bolts, especially when you’re living in a dodgy area as Della is.

And I have to admit that I have just the same habit as Della of going back several times to check I’ve locked the door properly. I mean, who hasn’t ever experienced that heart-sink feeling of being halfway to work and suddenly convinced you’ve left your front door unlocked?

So where does mildly obsessive become psychotic derangement? Why didn’t I read the clues more carefully? Even by the third paragraph of the story her personnel officer had already been suggesting that Della see a psychiatrist! Poor Della. Hopefully at least she’ll act as a salutary warning not to keep checking I’ve locked the door …


The Venus Fly Trap

What with John Wyndham’s novel “The Day of the Triffids” from 1951, the 1960 film “The Little Shop of Horrors” and Ruth Rendell’s “The Venus Fly Trap” from 1973, it seems that every decade had its man-eating plant moment.

Although strictly speaking, in Ruth Rendell’s short story it’s not the Venus Fly Trap itself that turns out to be the killer (well, apart from the solitary bluebottle or two).

Far more disturbingly, it’s blowsy Merle Smith who morphs from human form - all oyster satin, flame-coloured silk and golden curls, “pink and overflowing and female” (p66) - into a giant Venus Fly Trap. And then she proceeds to consume her bullied little friend Daphne, grey and spindly like a helpless fly.

A grotesque revenge that was cruelly misdirected, as it happens, because it wasn’t Daphne who’d uprooted psychotic Merle’s beloved Venus Fly Trap, it was the lad in the leather jacket who she’d riled with her busybody interfering.


The Vinegar Mother

During school holidays we’d sometimes be given a ginger-beer plant to look after. This wasn’t a plant with leaves and soil. It was an old jam-jar filled with cloudy golden liquid - and a weird sponge thing floating at the bottom.

The novelty involved having to feed it every day - with a spoonful of sugar. Then at the end of the week, or fortnight perhaps, my mother would carry out some mysterious operation which resulted in bottles of fizzy ginger-beer for us - and not one but two identical jam-jars of ginger-beer plant (one to be given away to some unsuspecting chum).

I was reminded of all this, reading this disconcerting short story about a “vinegar mother”, which I think must be the grown-up, sour version of our ginger beer plant. The “mother” that makes the vinegar sounds hideous - like a slimy piece of grey liver, yuk, fed on wine dregs - rather than the sugar-infused golden sponge that makes ginger beer.

There’s a very Rendell-esque play on the weirdness of vinegar mother. For as well as the slimy “mother” that makes vinegar, there’s also a vinegary mother in the form of the sinister, bad tempered Mrs Felton. With a sour twist to the story, she drugs the children with wine, so that she can carry on a nocturnal affair with the chap who first gave them the vinegar plant.


The Fall of a Coin

It’s intriguing that as a woman writer, Ruth Rendell’s women are often ghastlier than her men. There’s Della Galway, the bullying control-freak in “You Can’t Be Too Careful”; the sour Mrs Felton in “The Vinegar Mother”; and the selfish, joy-sucking drab, Lydia Simpson, in “The Clinging Woman”.

And now the hateful, repressed wife in this story, Nina Armadale, who loathes her husband, makes his life a misery but won’t let him go. Poetic justice for bullied husband James - who’s both sinner and sinned against - finally comes in the form of a gas meter in a hotel bedroom.

Sadly it’s so long since my days of student digs with dodgy gas meters that I couldn’t really fully appreciate the mechanics of the accidental (query?) death by gassing.


Almost Human

This is the short story that rather proves Ruth Rendell’s theory that humanity is feckless, faithless and flawed - unlike the dogs we live with. The humans in this story are scheming, selfish and ruthless. The pooches Monty and the Chief, on the other hand, are loyal and loving, gentle and trusting - strengths and virtues that might just prove to be the redemption of human contract-killer Dick.


Divided We Stand

The last story in the collection goes to the very heart of a trauma that strikes thousands of families every year - an elderly parent having a stroke, or dementia, and the ramifications for their family.

40-something sisters Marjorie and Pauline already had a strained relationship - spoiled and smug Marjorie with her docile husband and surprisingly well behaved teenagers, Pauline a highly-strung spinster with a history of mental illness. Now it falls to Pauline to look after their impossibly demanding mother after her stroke - on the basis that she’s a trained nurse with nothing else to do, whilst Majorie is far too busy with her family (and lots of eloquent excuses).

Cue a shed-load of passive-aggressive family tension with guilt, repression and simmering bitterness added to the mix.

But I really wasn’t ready for the ending. I hadn’t seen that twist coming at all. A terrific surprise … just as bleak, sinister and unsettling as all the preceding ten stories in this weird and disturbing collection.

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful

[Tommy Verhaegen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dit is zeker niet het beste boek van Ruth Rendell. Vooreerst heeft het niks te maken met haar later zo beroemd geworden inspekteur en verder zijn de ouderwetse verhalen nogal voorspelbaar.
Geschreven in 1976 is dat niet zo verwonderlijk, detectives en thrillers zijn ondertussen flink geëvolueerd.
Toch merk je hier al de kenmerkende meeslepende stijl van de langere verhalen van Rendell, het boek verveelt nooit echt, ook al kan je de uitkomst al wel raden.
De karakters zijn psychologisch goed onderbouwd, er zijn er nooit te veel van om het overzichtelijk te houden en op het einde zit er nog een plotwending in, die voor de oplettende lezer eerder al aangekondigd werd.
Het titelverhaal is wel heel speciaal en zal vooral door hondernliefhebbers gesmaakt worden.

[Yulande Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eleven stories and each one of them gave me a chill. Ruth Rundell is a merciless writer, sparing nothing in her depiction of the ordinary person and the consequences of their, quite ordinary yet destructive actions. Nothing supernatural here but enough to give one nightmares.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good (11) short stories! More intriguing story content than Colin Dexter's standalone books so far, at least for me. :)
Good english, interesting themes, well-crafted!

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simplemente excepcional, La planta carnívora y otros relatos, es una magnífica colección de historias que enganchan rápidamente, gracias a unas tramas dinámicas y sorprendentes que consiguen horrorizar al desprevenido lector.

No conocía a Ruth Rendell, autora de estos portentosos relatos, pero me ha parecido una escritora excelente que maneja a la perfección el relato breve. Su estilo de escritura es sencillo, fluido y elegante. Cuenta con una prosa rítmica y ágil, un lenguaje meramente funcional y unas descripciones capaces de conseguir que los elementos más normales produzcan pavor. Sin embargo la calidad literaria de sus personajes es muy variable y depende del relato en cuestión, siendo en algunas narraciones excelentes y en otras muy mejorables.

Las historias que se narran en La planta carnívora y otros relatos, no presentan un nexo común evidente. Son meros relatos que resultan inquietantes y no dejan indiferentes a nadie. Así pues, en esta selección nos encontramos con secuestradores sentimentales, crímenes originales, paranoias destructivas, obsesiones peligrosas, celos enfermizos, etc. Un compendio de situaciones cotidianas que en las manos de Rendell, se transforman en relatos perturbadores, con giros argumentales inesperados y desenlaces imprevisibles, que consiguen desconcertar y aterrar al lector por su increíble verosimilitud. Y es que aquí no hay vampiros, fantasmas o licántropos. Sólo gente corriente en situaciones que le pueden ocurrir a cualquiera. Y eso da mucho más miedo que cualquier historia con elementos sobrenaturales.

En suma, La planta carnívora y otros relatos, es un libro impactante que explora los límites del horror en la vida diaria, y consigue que veas con otros ojos las escenas habituales que se suceden en tu día a día.
Una excelente recomendación para todos aquellos que quieran conocer nuevos horizontes del relato de espanto, así como para el público en general. Su lectura, definitivamente, no decepciona.

[Susan Oleksiw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ruth Rendell had a fearlessly original imagination. In these eleven stories she explores crimes that cannot be simplified by a description. In the title story, a young man struggles to recall the brief hours when he was kidnapped. In "People Don't Do Such Things," an accountant and his wife befriend a writer, who is as different from them as could be--until they find he isn't, or they aren't.

"A Bad Heart" follows a boss who is persuaded to dine with a man he has just fired, despite his desire to sever the relationship. His misgivings increase as does the poor weather and he struggles to get through the evening. Della Galway proves the truth of her guiding principle in "You Can't Be Too Careful" when she rents a room in her flat to another woman. A chance encounter in a park leads one woman to believe she has seen her double, in a story so named ("The Double"). Two old classmates meet again, as different in character as in appearance in "Venus' Fly-Trap." In "His Worst Enemy," a man rescues a woman before she can commit suicide, and falls in love. Grateful to have been saved, she devotes her life to him. Perhaps the saddest story is "The Vinegar Mother," in which a young wife becomes involved with a neighbor and his adult son. "The Fall of a Coin" finds a long-married and bitterly unhappy couple in a hotel room waiting for the boss's daughter's wedding in the morning. A contract killer in "Almost Human" breaks all his own rules. A sister takes over the care of her declining mother while the second sister balks at the idea of taking in the old woman to give her sister a break, in "Divided We Stand."

Each story is a careful delineation of characters stretched to the max, or suddenly gifted with a moment of compassion and wisdom, kindness and acceptance.

[Elusive · Rating 3 out of 5]

'The Fallen Curtain' comprises eleven short stories that delve into a variety of subject matters ranging from insanity to murder with a compelling underlying psychological tone.

Some standouts include:

You Can't Be Too Careful - Strongly influenced by her upbringing, Della is obsessed with being cautious. She constantly locks doors and rechecks to make sure she hasn't left anything unlocked. Moving into her own flat is a dream come true until the arrival of her new flatmate whose carelessness drives her up the wall.

The Double - A couple is enjoying a relaxing time at the park until the woman notices another woman who looks like her doppelganger. This sighting disturbs her greatly but little does she know what the future holds..

The Clinging Woman - A man saves a woman who was trying to commit suicide. When she visits him to thank him, one meeting leads to another and soon it gets harder for them to breathe easy.

Divided We Stand - Two sisters couldn't live more different lives. While Marjorie has ample freedom, Pauline spends most of her time looking after their mother. When Marjorie learns that Pauline is seeing a doctor who finds this arrangement unfair, she finds herself worrying about what might happen next.

Overall, 'The Fallen Curtain' was a quick and fun-filled read which explored the dark side of humanity.

[Boris Cesnik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but predictable stories from once a masterful writer with top notch talent for psychologically suspenseful novels. Unfortunately it doesn't seem the case with short stories. Her skills as novelist are probably hampered by the shortness of this exercise. Her tales never seem to emanate those chills and thrills through unforeseen coincidences and analytical character study that permeate all her greatest novels. From page one you know already what, how and when it all going to happen. There was not a single story in this collection that made me sigh from apprehension, sudden twist or unexpected development. It's way below any domestic tale a la Shirley Jackson or Celia Fremlin.
They're definitely above average but not original.

[Tinylittlewars · Rating 4 out of 5]

An accidental find that turned out to be surprisingly good. Although I see now that the author is quite famous and wrote about a gazillion novels, she was new to me.. I don't normally read much fiction and I'm not that crazy about the "murder mystery" genre, nor am I particularly fond of British writers, but these stories were great. They have a classic sort of Hitchcock, Agatha Christie vibe, with a bit of a Twilight Zone-ish twist.. a bit of irony, some dark humor. Short and quick reads, very engaging, with a delightfully macabre flavor. A bit old fashioned, but it suits the style, and didn't detract from the stories at all in my opinion. Looking forward to reading some more of Rendell's short fiction.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable collection of short stories in which murders are driven by everyday peccadillos which can push people into hatred, madness and exasperation. The stories aren’t driven by exciting or unpredictable plotlines – most of them are fairly obvious in their denouement – but by the wonderful way in which Rendell explores the psychology of ‘everyday’ murders and the place of the mundane in such acts. The only critique I would have is that the stories feel a bit dated (they were first published in the 1970s), especially in their stereotypical portrayal of most female protagonists as high-strung, unreasonable and hysterical. But overall, it was an enjoyable read – I give it 3.5 stars.

[Googoogjoob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Effective. The stories here are all more or less domestic thrillers; Rendell writes in a dry, conversational style which both makes for easy reading and allows her to ramp up smoothly from very mundane beginnings to shocking endings. She's consistently interested in abnormal psychology- every story has characters with odd neuroses and paranoias- but, interestingly, she never resorts to using an actively unreliable narrator for shock/twist value; that is, her narrator characters are often oblivious of important facts, but they never actively lie to or conceal information from the reader- all the dramatic irony is "aboveboard."

[Richard Rimachi · Rating 3 out of 5]

En español fue publicado como La planta carnívora y otros relatos. Tiene una narrativa pulida y, en general, fluida, pero en conjunto se puede predecir el final de la mitad de los cuentos y algunos tienen finales precipitados, sobre todo si se tiene en cuenta el ritmo pausado que le antecede por el desarrollo de la historia. Aún así, se pueden disfrutar como bocados de literatura para ocupar tiempo en un viaje, por ejemplo.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Rendell's first book and thought it lacking, so I hadn't bothered with anything written by her since. This collection of short stories was quite good, though, as I not only enjoyed the mysterious and clever aspect of many of them, but I also got to re-experience Rendell's writing without having to slog through 200+ pages of a single story that may not pan out (like the earlier novel I read). This one's a fine book to read if one is into suspenseful stories.

[Terry Polston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a fan of short stories. several of these ended oddly and I am left wondering exactly what the outcome was. Did something happen or did nothing happen? Did the daughter not realize for two years that a Dr was her mother's caregiver and not her sister? Did the gas serp out of the coin operated machine kill the wife like she tried to kill him? The weirdness of a man proposing after dating only 3 weeks. Too many ways the stories could have ended, it leaves me unfulfilled.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually find Rendell's suspense/thrillers to be better than her mysteries, and this collection of stories puts her talent on full display. Published in the 1970's, so sometimes a bit dated, but the darker side of human nature somehow never seems to change and these remain chillingly effective.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a big fan of short stories, but I do like Ruth Rendell, and I liked these. I read just one or two a day at the same time as I was reading a biography. I didn't want too many short stories with psychological twists in my head at the same time. :)

[jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haven’t read a Ruth Rendell in a long time so I really enjoyed these short stories. Many remind me of Edgar Allen Poe and her way with the short story form places her in the company of many of the most distinguished writers of the genre. Lots of suspense and twists.

[Ravi · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a Ruth Rendell fan I enjoyed reading this. The stories vary in quality but I think are of historic interest for Rendell fans. The different social/moral values of the 1970s are striking to a contemporary reader.