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What Should I Read Next?

I can't (ever) stop talking about Ruth Rendell, and if you aren't sold yet, let me make this pitch.

"The Secret House of Death"--like many of Rendell's other early novels--is quite short. (The later Rendell became "baggier.") The book involves a bizarre group of neighbors; the neighbors study one another, sometimes from afar, and they make inferences about certain behaviors (and the inferences are generally wrong).

One woman, Doris, becomes convinced that another woman, Louise, is having an affair. Louise is continuously welcoming a certain man to her house for thirty or forty minutes, and no one knows who the man is.

Our protagonist--Susan--doesn't want any part of this, but she becomes involved when Louise stumbles in and seems to utter a confession. The confession is interrupted; still, slightly moved, Susan is ready to be a sympathetic friend to Louise. But when Louise seems to lie to Doris (who also stumbles in)--"That man who visits is just helping with central heating"--Susan loses her patience and hardens her heart against Louise.

Rendell drops little clues to indicate that Louise might not actually be having an affair, and that the misunderstanding surrounding Louise will lead to someone's murder.

After Rendell died, her editor remarked on her ability to create characters who jump off the page; just a few brushstrokes, and Rendell gives us someone we feel we know. The possible liability is that Rendell's people generally aren't "likable"; they're selfish, wrongheaded, provincial, and judgmental, just as actual people sometimes are. I don't mind this. I think Rendell's honesty is bracing. And she is always several steps ahead of me.

Well, you can find Rendell on the "Libby" app, or via Kindle. I recommend the early, short novels: "A Judgment in Stone," "A Demon in My View," "A Guilty Thing Surprised." I always like to zip through the list of Rendell's heavyweight fans: Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Ian Rankin, Marilyn Stasio, PD James, Val McDermid. I've read maybe three-fourths of her massive body of work, and I still love her.
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