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| Not in the Flesh: A Wexford Novel (Inspector Wexford Mystery) | 
 enlarge | Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy Used: $5.00
You Save: $20.95 (81%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 15521
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0307406814
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780307406811
ASIN: 0307406814
Publication Date: June 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Inspector Wexford Series October 9, 2008
The calm and capable Wexford once again solves the local crime. But not before discovering some of the area's most eccentric and immoral personalities, and unearthing new scandals in an otherwise staid and stodgy British suburb. A Wexford novel never disappoints.
Nice Addition to the Wexford Series September 18, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have been a fan of Ruth Rendell novels for more than three decades but her Wexford novels have never been my favorite Rendell books. Nevertheless, I have read each and every one of them and have found them to be consistently high-quality police procedurals always worth my reading time. Not in the Flesh, the twenty-first Wexford novel, does remind me that I generally enjoy Rendell's standalone novels and her Barbara Vine novels more but, as always, this latest one is a welcome addition to the Wexford saga.
It all started when Jim Belbury and his truffle-sniffing dog found more than they were looking for on one of their regular attempts to put a few extra pounds into Belbury's pockets. Jim knew that the dog had a real talent for unearthing the valuable truffles so he encouraged his dog to keep at it after it began digging in a likely spot. Unfortunately for Jim, rather than a large truffle, the dog came away with what was left of a human hand that had been buried in that particular spot.
When Inspector Wexford learns that the recovered body has been in the ground for some eleven years, Wexford and his team settle in for some old-fashioned police work and begin to interview everyone living in the vicinity of the crime scene. Matters get complicated when a second body is found within a stone's throw of where the first was recovered. The second victim seems to have only been dead for eight years but Wexford does not believe in coincidence and is convinced that the two deaths have to be related in some way.
Rendell provides an array of characters from various levels of British society for Wexford and the Kingsmarkham police force to interview and it is through a long series of interviews that provide a series of interconnecting clues that the case is eventually solved. Some readers will solve the case before Wexford does but, after all, that can be part of the fun, and no mystery writer should be faulted for letting that happen.
Not in the Flesh has a subplot of sorts that offers Rendell the opportunity to explore the horrors of the genital mutilation suffered by countless young African girls, including those whose families have immigrated to Britain. Wexford, partially at the request of one of his daughters, spends some of his precious time trying to prevent just that horror from happening to a young girl whom everyone expects will soon be taken out of the country to suffer the process. It is a somewhat interesting subplot, particularly in the way that it explores the limitations faced by the British legal system in protecting potential victims but, ultimately, it is somewhat of a distraction.
Ruth Rendell fans will not be disappointed in Not in the Flesh, but first-timers might wonder a bit what all the fuss about the Wexford series is if they stop with this one. That said, I will definitely be reading the next offering from Rendell, whether it be another Wexford novel, one of her standalones, or something written under the Barbara Vine pen name.
Kingsmarkham 2006 September 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ruth Rendell published her first murder mystery set in Kingsmarkham in 1964. By my way of reckoning, that's the year the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. Kingsmarkham was a provincial little town where everyone knew everyone else. A couple of books later, Inspector Wexford's daughter Sheila was, I think, a bit of a proto-hippy. Over the years the Wexford series has not only presented good mystery novels but chronicled the growth of Kingsmarkham from a bywater to a sprawling entity which has absorbed former neighboring villages and is itself much closer to London. Assumptions about sexual and family relationships, about economics, about the very landscape have changed, and Wexford has to change with them. The town has also become ethnically diverse. In "Not in the Flesh" Wexford recalls the time when it seemed to him that the only black family in town was his doctor's; now there is enough of a Somali community that Wexford's daughters start an organization opposing "female circumcision" and Wexford becomes involved. He and his family and his colleague Mike Burden have gotten older, though perhaps only a few years for each decade Kingsmarkham has grown--Sheila has a baby daughter now and is still young enough to be cast as a goddess of love in a film. But for me at least part of the pleasure of a Wexford novel is finding out what is new and what is still recognizable in Kingsmarkham.
"Not in the Flesh" directs us, however, to the past, not only in bringing together stories from eight and eleven years earlier but in its setting, a tiny crossroads that feels like a village where everyone's grandfathers knew (and distrusted?) each other. There is the resident novelist (with his two wives) in the ugly Victorian house, the gentry from the big house, the blacksmith's grandson who has gone into the construction business, the couple whose son and his girlfriend live upstairs but commute to London. Gradually the circle expands to include outsiders: seasonal fruit-pickers, a happily married biology teacher with secret ambitions. We glimpse the bizarre possibility of a new life for an old woman who had seemed locked in misery by an old crime. A knife and various wedding rings weave the story together.
OK, I confess it--I figured out the plot well before Wexford did, though not the details of who, where and with what weapon--details that turned out not to be too important, since there was guilt enough and to spare.
At the same time, I loved the experience of the novel, the working out of the intertwining plots, the sad ironies and the moral compromises that modern life imposes on those for whom the truth seemed so simple a few weeks or years or decades ago. Wexford still stumbles a little and must reach for the right words when he goes to explain that what he does, solving a crime and bringing the murderer to justice, is for the good of society. He still suffers, and watches other suffer, when he must decide whether to allow a crime to go forward in order to catch the perpetrators. Nothing is simple or easy, the way it might seem in the sleepy little village with its dozen "suspects," but it is still possible to reconstruct the crime.
Disappointed September 2, 2008
I was happy to find a new Inspector Wexford book and had read a few chapters before I looked at reviews here.
Once I read about the subplot, if you call it that, of female circumcision among the African women I was disappointed. I don't see how that has anything to do with the main story so when the topic came up, I skipped those paragraphs and went on with the main story.
During the investigation, I was surprised at how the people could have total recall of things that happened years ago. I don't think that they usually do, but this is a story after all.
The murders and solving were up to Ruth's usual good writing. Those parts I enjoyed!
Not Her Best August 31, 2008
I'm more a fan of her non-series books. That doesn't mean I won't read a Wexford novel. I will and I do--generally to my enjoyment.
Unfortunately, this was not one of her best. That said, it still beats the work of many of her contemporaries. Few have as much insight into human character, offer such a plethora of intriguing characters and devise such devilishly complex plots.
The story gets off to a good start when a truffle-hunting dog uncovers the skeletal remains of a man who obviously has been the victim of foul play. That brings Inspector Reg Wexford and his team into play. They're so familiar to us old fans we look forward to seeing them in action again.
Wexford's family gets more involved than usual in this novel. Daughters Sheila, an actress, and Sylvia, a social worker, involve Reg in efforts to save a young Somali girl from the mutilation of female circumcision. Even wife Dora has probably her biggest role since "Road Rage."
This novel is no exception from the norm in the matter of insight and eccentric characters. Perhaps it's the plotting that's a bit off. There's just a bit too much coincidence and--despite red herrings aplenty--it wasn't difficult to identify the culprits.
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