Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Ruth Rendell

Article from salon.com about Ruth Rendell.

Have never been hooked on crime fiction but have enjoyed some of her books. Best of all though, are her short stories I think. In fact she wrote one short story which would be in my anthology of best-ever short stories. I don't have my copy of the collected short stories any more having lent it to a friend (who apparently misunderstand the word "lent" for "gave" as friends unfortuantely tend to do). But it was a murder story in four pages or so - in the form of a dialogue between a husband and wife about mosquito bites and nicotine patches. In that conversation you could work out exactly how the wife was murdering the husband and that the husband didn't have a clue about the fact that she was doing so! My jaw dropped in awe and I had to read it several times.

2 comments:

theothrastus said...

I have read several short stories by Ruth Rendall as well as a few of her books,but I don't remember the story you describe.

bibliobibuli said...

i feel so sad because i lent the book to a "friend" and it never came back. but it was a big thick collection of stories and i think had one of the wexford novels at the beginning. i will try to track it down and give you a definitive answer!