Ruth Rendell. From Doon with Death (1964)

     Ruth Rendell. From Doon with Death (1964) First of the Wexfords; it shows Rendell’s fascination with deviant behaviour, her skill at plotting, and her ability to make even outlandish motivations seem plausible. Neither Wexford nor Burden are fully developed here (their personal lives form a perfunctory backdrop to the puzzle and its solution), but their basic characters are clear enough and their later development is consistent with what we see here: a stolidly conservative temperament crossed with the tolerance that comes from wide experience in Wexford, and a narrower emotional range in Burden, who can still be surprised as well as shocked by the vagaries of human nature. The reader solves the puzzle well before the coppers do, but Rendell’s skill at trailing red herrings across the 'tec's path is already evident. *** (2004)