Not in the Flesh (Inspector Wexford Series #21) by Ruth Rendell, Tim Curry (Read by)

The Barnes & Noble Review

Veteran of 21 novels, Chief Inspector Wexford entered the world in 1964's From Doon with Death, Ruth Rendell's very first book. Since then he has seen it all: crimes of passion, greed, neglect, convenience, and madness; lives extinguished and shattered; his own wife kidnapped. He has borne up under it, and yet there are things out there undermining his spirit: being called "guv" instead of "sir" is one. Coping with the Internet and, indeed, computers in general, and having to measure the world in centimeters instead of inches are some more. He also doesn't like calling people he doesn't know by their given names -- and he doesn't like it that no one knows what a "given name" is any more. Men's failure to wear neckties and the disappearance of putting milk in tea make him melancholy. And he simply loathes the expression "Hi, how're you?" ("When this vacuous greeting started to become commonplace, Wexford resolved not to answer it in any circumstances.") The great man's inner grousing on the decline of everything has grown so routine in recent years that I think we can call him a codger -- though anyone would rather spend time with him if the alternative were the company of his ferociously up-to-date, politically correct sidekick, Detective Sergeant Hannah Goldsmith.

In the present volume, Wexford and his team -- the members and their little ways well known to Rendell fans -- have been called over from Kingsmarkham to nearby Flagford with its "somewhat too picturesque village center." Here a body, clearly buried years ago, has been discovered by a man and his dog out searching for truffles. It lies in land left untended ever since its owner, John Grimble, a cheesy builder, was refused planning permission to tear down the existing house and replace it with four of his own slipshod constructions. Wexford visits Grimble at home, accompanied by his colleague, the consummate clotheshorse Inspector Mike Burden ("charcoal trousers with a knife-edge crease and a stone-colored polo neck under a linen jacket"). And thus we enter the first of the book's many dwellings, the precise and evocative depiction of whose interiors and furnishings is one of Rendell's great gifts and always a means of showing her characters' souls. In this case we find Grimble and his wife, both only around 50 but resolutely embracing the lethargy of old age, "anchored to orthopedic armchairs, the kind that have back supports and adjustable footrests, placed in the best position for perpetual television watching."

Wexford and his troop find similar unloveliness and spiritual poverty as they visit additional people for questioning. Among these are the curdling snob Mrs. McNeil, a widow who moved with her late husband, for obscure reasons, from a grand house to starkly modern quarters that are dislocation incarnate; the Hunters, living in sweltering heat and near senility; a Somali refugee family, the Imrans, whose apartment in a council-housing tower block is neat as a pin and a scene of order -- yet they seem intent on effecting the genital mutilation of their five-year-old daughter. This last makes up a free-standing subplot providing both a dose of hideous suspense and a very Rendellian glimpse of the quandaries attendant on a multicultural Britain.

At the tangled center of the much-populated story are Owen Tredown, a bestselling author of fantasy novels set in ancient times who is dying of cancer, and his two wives. They are the former Mrs. Tredown, Claudia Ricardo, an aging hippy and "ravaged beauty," and her successor, Maeve, "small and round with a face like a pretty piglet's." There is something decidedly rum about her in particular, and Wexford feels "that if he had been shown a photograph of her and told that she was the matron of a notoriously cruel old people's home or the director of a brutal boot camp, he wouldn't have been surprised. It was all to do with her economical and clipped speech, the iciness in her light blue eyes, and the severe gray flannel suit that she wore." These three live in unwholesome propinquity in a vast and dreadful Victorian house, "unprepossessing, large, ill-proportioned, mainly of purplish-red brick, roofed in bright blue-gray slates and with Gothic ogee-topped windows of buff-colored stone. The front door might have been a church doorway, dark brown, black-iron-studded." As for the inside, it "confirmed Wexford's opinion that Victorian builders (architects?) had gone out of their way to make their interiors hideous." It is not to be expected that all is sweetness and light in this venue.

Before the first body is identified through the miracle of DNA testing, another one shows up, this, too, disposed of years ago, and matters become even more complicated -- matters I do not feel free to discuss for fear of revealing more than is honorable. As it happens, this is not one of Rendell's better conceived and constructed mysteries, for a couple of reasons. In the first place, while DNA testing is one of the few modern advances to leave Wexford unruffled, it has been a blow to crime novels, replacing sleuthing with waiting around for the results -- time spent, as here, in make-work. In the second place, the motive for the first murder is one that unquestionably fascinates writers but has never, to my knowledge, prompted a murder in real life. Rendell works valiantly to make the ins and outs of the commission of the crime -- crimes, I should say -- complex enough to be satisfying, but I can't say that she quite pulls it off.

Still, if this is not first-rate Rendell, there is much pleasure to be had from it, especially for old Wexford hands. We catch up on DS Hannah Goldsmith's relationship with Bal Bhattacharya, DI Mike Burden's wardrobe, DS Barry Vine's opera collection, DC Damon Coleman's trials as a black man, DC Lyn Fancourt's struggle with her weight and Wexford's to maintain his doctor-mandated regime of walking and taking a glass of red wine instead of a pint. We are clued in to Wexford's daughter Sylvia's acting career, and, last but not least, to the look and feel of England as it hobbles along in the first decade of the 21st century. --Katherine A. Powers

Katherine A. Powers writes the literary column "A Reading Life" for the Boston Sunday Globe and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

From the Publisher

A new Chief Inspector Wexford mystery from the author who Time magazine has called “the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world.”

When the truffle-hunting dog starts to dig furiously, his master’s first reaction is delight at the size of the clump the dog has unearthed: at the going rate, this one truffle might be worth several hundred pounds. Then the dirt falls away to reveal not a precious mushroom but the bones and tendons of what is clearly a human hand.

In Not in the Flesh, Chief Inspector Wexford tries to piece together events that took place eleven years earlier, a time when someone was secretly interred in a secluded patch of English countryside. Now Wexford and his team will need to interrogate everyone who lives nearby to see if they can turn up a match for the dead man among the eighty-five people in this part of England who have disappeared over the past decade. Then, when a second body is discovered nearby, Wexford experiences a feeling that’s become a rarity for the veteran policeman: surprise.

As Wexford painstakingly moves to resolve these multiple mysteries, long-buried secrets are brought to daylight, and Ruth Rendell once again proves why she has been hailed as our greatest living mystery writer.

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

In the best whodunit tradition, Rendell advances her plot through surprises, some transparent enough to satisfy the engaged reader, others so shocking they dash all calculations.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Ruth Rendell published From Doon with Death, the first of her Chief Inspector Wexford novels, in 1964. So it is not surprising that the old boy finds himself in codgerly company these days. Ms. Rendell has ghoulish fun with the assorted elderly, eccentric characters who bedevil him in Not in the Flesh, which is only the third of her Wexford books to appear in this present century. When not chronicling the exploits of this unflappable police detective, Ms. Rendell has written vigorous, clever stand-alone fiction (most notably The Water's Lovely last year). But the Wexford books, while more restrained, amount to reunions with an old chum.

Publishers Weekly

In addition to solving two long-ago murders, Chief Inspector Wexford is troubled by female genital mutilation in the local Somali community. The temptation would be to cut the subplot, but this abridgment retains the richness of the novel. Tim Curry's performance is splendid, even better than Daniel Gerroll's excellent performance of Rendell's End in Tears. Curry does a particularly marvelous job with the minor characters, such as the two wives-in-law of a local author, who cackle at the sexual innuendos of their own jokes. Then there's 84-year-old Irene McNeil, alternately supercilious and weepy. Throw in the obsessive Grimbles, on whose land the bodies were found; some migrant fruit-picking Roma; Wexford's family; Somali immigrants; and Curry somehow sounds like a full-cast audio. If only Wexford sounded less like his assistant Burden, the performance would be absolutely perfect. A Crown hardcover (reviewed online). (July)

Caroline Mann - Library Journal

The prolific Rendell (or Barbara Vine, depending on what you're reading) offers her 21st Chief Inspector Wexford novel. Readers watch as a truffle-hunting suburbanite and his dog stumble across a long-buried body on a vacant property. Upon investigation, Wexford and his team uncover a second murder victim in the basement of the abandoned house on the property. The crimes were committed so long ago that the bodies themselves yield few clues, but the neighbors all seem to have reasons to be cast in a suspicious light. Wexford embarks on an arduous probe in an effort to unravel the mystery, encountering along the way the usual odd assortment of characters. Interspersed in his investigation is an odd subplot involving the genital mutilation of young Somali immigrants in Britain. As always, Wexford endures modern (and in his opinion, less civilized) British society and patiently prods his suspects until they reveal all. Not quite as compelling in tone as some of Rendell's other works but complex enough to satisfy any mystery fan. Recommended for all public libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford and his Kingsmarkham colleagues (End in Tears, 2005, etc.) deal with not one but two bodies of men whose relatives long ago gave up hope of ever hearing from them again. Jim Belbury's truffle dog makes the first discovery: a man interred 11 years ago in a drainage ditch. John Grimble and his friend Bill Runge had dug the ditch back when Grimble expected permission to replace the tumbledown house on Old Grimble's Field with four new homes. They filled in the ditch when permission was denied. DI Mike Burden, searching the boarded-up house, finds a second corpse, this one waiting eight years in its underclothes to be found. Ancient former neighbor Irene McNeil tells Wexford that her late husband Ron shot the intruder in self-defense when he brandished a knife, and for a time it seems that the killers may be easier to identify than the victims. New inquiries into open missing-persons cases and repeated conversations with other neighbors-especially dying fantasy novelist Owen Tredown and the two wives, present and past, who live with him-only deepen the mystery. Back in the present, Wexford's daughter Sheila, cast in the starring role in a film adaptation of Tredown's most famous book, tries to enlist her father in the battle against the circumcision of young Somali girls in the neighborhood-a episode that at least hints at a happy ending. Rich, tangled and as sharply observed as ever.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0739366378
  
• ISBN-13: 9780739366370
• Format: Compact Disc
• Publisher: Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Pub. Date: June 2008
• Edition Description: ABR
• Sales Rank: 49,168
• Series: Chief Inspector Wexford Series, #21

• Read an Excerpt

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Tom Belbury died in May and now that summer was over his brother missed him more than ever. Neither of them had married, so there was no widow and no children, only the dog, Honey. Jim took Honey to live with him; he had always liked her and it was what Tom had wanted. When he knew he hadn’t long to live he worried a lot about Honey, what would happen to her after he was gone, and though Jim assured him repeatedly that he would take her, Tom said it again and again.

“Haven’t I promised over and over?” Jim asked. “You want me to put it in writing and get it witnessed? I will if that’s what you want.”

“No, I trust you. She’s a good dog.”

Tom’s trust hadn’t been misplaced. Jim lived in the cottage that had been the brothers’ parents’ home and there Honey went to live with him. She was no beauty, owing her ancestry to an apparent mix of spaniel, basset hound, and Jack Russell. Tom used to say she looked like a corgi and everyone knew corgis were the Queen’s dogs, having so to speak the royal seal of approval, but Jim couldn’t see it. Nevertheless, he had grown attached to Honey. Apart from fidelity and affection, she had one great virtue. She was a truffle dog.

Every September, at the beginning of the month, Tom and Honey used to go into one patch of woodland or another in the neighborhood of Flagford and hunt for truffles. A lot of people scoffed. They said truffles couldn’t be found in Britain, only in France and Italy, but there was no doubt Honey found them, was rewarded with a lump of meat, and Tom sold the truffles to a famous Londonrestaurant for £200 a pound.

Jim disliked the taste but he liked the idea of £200 and pos- sibly more. He had never been truffle-hunting with Tom but he knew how it was done. This was why a mild and sunny morning in late September found him and Honey in what their neighbors called the posh part of Flagford where Flagford Hall faced Athelstan House across Pump Lane, each amid extensive grounds. They had no interest in these houses or their occupants. They were heading for Old Grimble’s Field that filled the corner between the gardens of Athelstan House and two identical detached houses called Oak Lodge and Marshmead.

Like the Holy Roman Empire, which Gibbon said was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire, this open space wasn’t a field, nor was Grimble particularly old or really called Grimble. It was an overgrown piece of land, about an acre of what estate agents describe as a corner plot. Due to years of inattention, saplings had grown into trees, shrubs into bushes, roses and privet and dogwood into hedges, and trees had doubled in size. Somewhere in the middle of this burgeoning woodland stood a semiderelict bungalow that had belonged to Grimble’s father, its windows boarded up, its roof slowly shedding its tiles. Tom Belbury had been there truffle- hunting with Honey the year before and pronounced it rich in members of the genus Tuber.

Because Tom had carried the rewards for Honey unwrapped in the breast pocket of his leather jacket, he usually smelled of meat that was slightly “off.” Jim hadn’t much liked it at the time, but now he recalled it with affection. How pleased dear old Tom would be to see him and Honey heading for Old Grimble’s Field in close companionship, following his old pursuit. Perhaps he could see, Jim thought sentimentally, and imagined him looking down from whatever truffle wood in the sky he found himself in.

Honey was the director of operations. Tom used to claim that she was drawn to a particular spot by the presence of truffle flies hovering around the base of a tree, and now she led Jim to a mature tree (a sycamore, he thought it was) where he could see the flies himself.

“Get digging, girl,” he said.





The irregular warty lump, about the size of a tennis ball, which Honey unearthed, she willingly relinquished in exchange for the cube of sirloin steak Jim took out of a plastic zipper-lock bag he had brought with him.

“This old fungus must weigh a good half-pound,” he said aloud. “Keep on with the good work, Honey.”

Honey kept on. The truffle flies annoyed her and she snapped at the swarms, scattering them and snuffling toward where they had been densest. There she began digging again, fetched out of the rich leaf mold first a much smaller truffle, then one about the size of a large potato and was rewarded once more with pieces of sirloin.

“There’s a lot more flies buzzing about over there,” Jim said, pointing to a biggish beech tree which looked a hundred years old. “How about moving on?”

Honey had no intention of moving on. So might a diamond prospector refuse to abandon the lode where gems worth a fortune had already come to light, until he was sure the seam had been exhausted. Honey sniffed, dug, slapped at the flies with her paws, dug again. No more truffles were foraged and the object that she had unearthed was of no interest to her. It lay exposed on the chestnut-colored soil, white, fanlike, unmistakably what it was: a human hand.

Or, rather, the bones of a human hand, flesh, skin, veins, tendons all gone.

“Oh, my lord, girl,” said Jim Belbury, “whatever have you gone and found?”

As if she understood, Honey stopped digging, sat down, and put her head on one side. Jim patted her. He put the three truffles in the plastic bag he had brought with him for that purpose, placed the bag inside his backpack, and removed from it his mobile phone. Jim might be an old countryman, once an agricultural laborer and living in a cottage with no proper bathroom and no main drainage, but still he would no more have gone out without his mobile than would his fifteen-year-old great-nephew. Unaware of the number of Kingsmarkham police station, he dialed Information.