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In addition to her Inspector Wexford series and the psychological suspense novels written as Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell also has been developing that group of novels that I've come to think of as the London collectives, books that have neither a sole protagonist nor a single detective but instead deal with a largely random collection of characters brought together by the coincidence of location and forced to deal with the intrusion of violence into their otherwise perfectly ordinary lives. While THE GIRL NEXT DOOR does not precisely fit the pattern, in that it is set in an outer London suburb and its cast of characters is united by more than accident, its protagonist, so to speak, is an ensemble of friends and acquaintances who once knew each other as children and are now reunited because a crime has come to light in a place where they used to play.
There is no real mystery to be solved here. The crime, committed during the Second World War by a man driven to violence by the spectacle of his wife holding hands with another man, is described in the opening pages. After killing the offending pair, the murderer, who is identified, cut off those hands and hid them in a box deep in some tunnels where the children used to hang out.
And there they have remained until the present moment, revealed in the usual fashion by new construction. The bizarreness of the find of course causes a brief sensation in the papers, and the children, now well into their seventies, come together to tell what they can to the police. Most of them have not been in touch with one another over the years, but some new friendships are formed as a result.
The police, in the person of one DI Colin Quell, are not overly interested. After all, whoever put the hands in the tunnel must be long dead (not true) so what's the point? But he goes through the motions, assembles the group and warns himself to tread carefully as they are all very old and unquestionably fragile in both mind and body. The interview introduces what will be a major theme of the book - the contrast between how the old experience their lives and how they are thought to by those much younger.
Rendell will turn eighty-five early next year, so she may be said to speak with a certain authority on the subject of age. Her characters are in good health, in full possession of their minds and memories, and apt to behave with the same passion and lack of prudence as the young. In general, their only concession to their years is the rueful acknowledgement that they don't have many of them left.
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR derives considerable amusement out of the language spoken by the young and remembered by the old. The older generation is at pains to remember current terminology - fire service for fire brigade, sink for basin, for example, having been sternly reproved by their children for getting it wrong. When they do, the younger characters view it as a sign that their elders are past it, have moved into that country of old age where they can be safely parked, out of the way of the traffic of real life. And if they stubbornly refuse to stay where they have been put, that must be the Alzheimer's kicking in. But if language is a marker of vitality, what to make of the representative of a most upscale care home who speaks of her charges as "commensals" and "inquilines"?
I sometimes suspect that the publicity people are a bit at a loss at how to market the London novels. I hear them saying, "Why can't she write more Wexford and make our lives easier?" In this case, the early publicity made much of what might be termed an inappropriate relationship between the girl of the title and an older man. The suggestion was that Rendell would take a controversial position on the matter, especially in the light of scandals like the Jimmy Saville revelations. While the relationship is pivotal to the plot, rest assured that Rendell is not in the running to become a latter-day Nabokov.
Without doubt, like other books in the London group, this one will confound the expectations of readers hoping for a nice old-fashioned murder with a bit of detection thrown in. But it is unlikely to disappoint any reader in the mood for a good and challenging novel, written in impeccable prose, with a wry sense of humour, and much to say about how we live in a world that both changes and remains the same.
§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, November 2014
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