While new authors keep appearing, older ones keep at it until they run out (Hemingway) or pass away (Clancy). Those who retire return (Rankin). Those staying on may no longer be in top form (le Carre). But several are (Rendell). Not that this reviewer rates Ruth Randell on a par with Agatha Christie.
No Man’s Nightingale by Ruth Rendell 324pp 2013 Arrow paperback 350 baht Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops
The British author has made up the setting of the town of Kingsmarkham and Inspector Wexford her literary creation. Carried over in her numerous crime thrillers, she has retired him. Yet tending his garden is a bit of a bore. He misses the mental exercise of matching wits with a culprit's.
The author describes the local inhabitants, who know one another. Still, all have skeletons in their closets they keep to themselves. An unreported rape. Sacked from their job in London for dishonesty. The vicar is a woman. Unpopular, who disliked her so much to strangle her?
The case would have fallen to Wexford were he still active, but as he's not, an outsider police officer is sent in. Burden is higher on the totem pole. He asks Wexford to assist, who jumps at the chance.
No Man's Nightingale is basically a duel between two experienced cops as they gather and interpret the same evidence in their joint investigation. A red herring is dragged back and forth before us as each person they question seems to incriminate him or herself.
In one instance a woman tells them a plausible story of having seen a man (one of the suspects) near the scene of the crime. Only to have her husband tell them that she is a fableist (habitual liar). To make matters more complex, the characters most likely to have done it are being murdered.
Race enters the plot as Indians are part of the community. And a secret society is found. Burden and Wexford are stumped. A hidden room is found — and another body. A stranger turns up. But does what he tells them help solve or further intensify the mystery?
Highly professional Ruth Rendell keeps No Man's Nightingale to under 350 pages, omitting padding and swearing. Which, along with her clever plotting and lucid dialogue, puts her in a class of the own.
She's been at it for four decades, with no sign of slowing down. Unlike Hemingway, her imagination hasn't dried up. More power to Ruth Rendell.
The Target by David Baldacci 420pp 2014 Macmillan paperback 325 baht Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops
In praise of killers
The Target by David Baldacci 420pp 2014 Macmillan paperback 325 baht Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops
The commandment "Thou shall not kill" has a proviso: Unless you are a soldier. In this case killing as many of the enemy as you can isn't a sin. To be sure, government sanctioned killing isn't confined to the battlefield, planes dropping bombs taking their toll.
Then again countries have men and women out of uniform trained not in close order drill, but in the numerous ways of killing in personal combat and from afar. The most proficient of them earn the honour of being rated assassins. Like James Bond, an agent with the licence to kill.
Of course, not all assassins are sanctioned. John Wilkes Booth wasn't. Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't. They had their own reasons, were hunted down and paid the penalty for them. Death row is filled with murderers who assumed the roles of judge, jury and executioner. Or just liked the sight of blood.
This is brought out in Yank author David Baldacci's The Target. He notes that the world is full of killers, officially approved and not. Examples are given. All too many were victims of their own family. In the worst cases, children are made to kill their parents.
In his dozens of crime thrillers, the author has introduced a number of literary creations as protagonists, criminalists of a different stripe. Yet, they are alike in their determination to nab the culprit. This time around it's Will Robie and Jessica Reed, CIA assassins working independently and together.
Friends who have saved each other's lives, not lovers, they've lost track of the number of their country's enemies they killed abroad. Remaining sharp, there's a growing sense of been there, done that. Halloween is coming up, the First Family scheduled to show up at a masked party.
The secret service and police force are on hand, and Robie and Reed. So is a team of North Korean assassins out to get the First Family. Bodies pile up. The twist in the penultimate chapter will knock your socks off.
David Baldacci is in the pantheon of contemporary scriveners — exciting, suspenseful. Nevertheless, this reviewer wonders whether making heroes of assassins is wise. Let's not forget that it was a political assassination that sparked World War I.
