Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (7313)

Rating:
Summary: a compelling mystery
Review: A great story; good to the last word in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Good police procedural with a weak ending
Review: Chief Inspector Wexford, protagonist in many Rendell books, investigates the shooting death, in an apparent robbery, of a well-known writer in her home, along with most of her family. The only survivor and eyewitness is the teenage granddaughter, Daisy, wounded and depressed. As the police investigate, a number of suspicious characters complicate the process; while Wexford's own strained relations with his daughter Sheila make Daisy's plight more poignant.

This longish mystery, with well-drawn characters, plenty of red herrings and several social classes, is enjoyable until the end. The book comes to a rapid conclusion, as Wexford uncovers the truth in a burst of insight and detection, while short-changing evidence gathering.

--inotherworlds.com

Rating:
Summary: My Introduction To Reginald Wexford
Review: I read this book in college for a Detective Fiction course and I loved it. I liked this book so much I went on to read about half a dozen other novels that Ruth Rendell has written about Reginald Wexford. This book isn't so much a mysterious whodunnit as it is about the private life of the detective, Reginald Wexford. It is pretty easy to figure out who commited the murders at the beginning of the book, but Wexford's reasoning is clouded somewhat by his personal life and his relationship with his younger daughter Sheila. If you aren't interested in reading a novel that is mostly social commentary, as most of the Wexford novels are, and are more into a murder mysteries that are hard to figure out, then this may not be the novel for you. If you are interested in reading about social trends that are current, and are written in an interesting fashion, I strongly recommmend this book.