Friday, April 8, 2011

The Best Man to Die - Ruth Rendell


I was planning on starting this post with an exposition on how Ruth Rendell's early (60s-70s) Wexford novels are so different from her more recent output, but thinking about it, I don't think they are that different, not really. A lot of people who were introduced to Rendell with her newer novels, especially the non-Wexford psychological thrillers or the Barbara Vine novels, often complain that the early Wexfords are formulaic and boring and more focused on plot than character, but I don't agree. There is a lot of typical Rendell-style engaging, psychologically acute characterization here and the novels are generally fast-paced and the furthest thing from boring.

There are two cases at the core of Best Man, one for Wexford and Burden and one (initially) for the uniformed branch. Wexford discovers the body of shady lorry-driver Charlie Hatton, bashed in the head when returning from his best friend's stag party. Meanwhile, in nearby Stowerton, London banker Jerome Fanshawe overturns his car on the highway in a horrible and inexplicable accident. Three bodies, two dead and one living, are found - the survivor is Fanshawe's wife, Dorothy, comatose but expected to have no lasting injuries. Dorothy's sister identifies the two dead bodies as Fanshawe and Jerome and Dorothy's daughter, Nora.

Wexford interviews the main figures in Charlie's life, including his wife and his best friend. Lilian Hatton is fairly likable and one of Rendell's milder portrayals of that type - a Victorian wife, completely wrapped up in her husband. It is clear, however, that the far more important person is Charlie's friend Jack. Rendell writes that Charlie and Jack "had found in each other an all-encompassing spiritual compatibility... without each other their lives would be incomplete, lacking, as it were, the essence and the fuse." Rendell explores this friendship largely through the reactions of others to it. Burden, ever the prissy reactionary, is revolted by Jack's "womanish" display of grief at the news of Charlie's death, but Wexford is sympathetic (also refer to the ending of From Doon With Death).

Jack and Charlie aren't gay. Well, they probably aren't gay? It's never quite so cut and dry with relationships as intense and intimate as Jack and Charlie's, and Rendell understand that. Their closeness is not lessened by the fact that they aren't lovers, don't see each other romantically at all - in fact, perhaps it enriches it, making it some kind of a Platonic ideal - but Rendell does hint that, in another time (this is only 1970, after all), Jack and Charlie might have been lovers. Certainly, this powerful all-consuming symbiotic kind of friendship is not exactly common, and even Jack and Charlie are quite baffled by their feelings. Jack fantasizes about a time where he and Charlie and their wives will be sitting on a shaded porch, sipping drinks. There's a lot to be read into their relationship, and Rendell leaves it open to interpretation - it's a very thoughtful portrayal, all the same, and it's not exactly common to see a fictional friendship between two men that is so... un-gruff. Even (arguably) heterosexual men have feelings, too, after all.

Oh, and Charlie is also a total crook and the money he throws around is ill-begotten, but that's par for the course.

Meanwhile, Dorothy Fanshawe regains consciousness and maintains that her daughter was never in the car with her and her husband - that nobody but the two of them was in the car - and that Nora Fanshawe is safely in Germany. Dorothy, in her way, is a really engaging character. She's quite stupid, materialistic, narrow-minded, a horrible snob - yet, Rendell is unusually easy on her, and for all her faults, Dorothy has her redeeming qualities. She's not really an unkind woman, but what's most moving is her love for her daughter, Nora. The relationship between Dorothy and Nora is nuanced and extremely well-done, one of my favorites in Rendell. I'd say more, but since for a good portion of the novel it's unclear whether Nora is alive or dead, I won't spoil it.

The actual mystery is clever, and adroitly clued, Christie-style (I managed to guess who the killer was, and how the cases were connected), but definitely secondary to the characterization here.

Also, it seems to me that this is perhaps the point where Rendell decided that Wexford was in it for the long haul. Wexford's wife and daughters are mentioned in the previous novel (Wolf to the Slaughter, the third, which I believe is the first of the really great Wexford novels), but this is the first where his home life is a major part of the novel, and there's a charming and unusually light (even cozy) subplot about a dog named Clytemnestra who looks as though she was knitted. The lovable and infuriating Sheila, Wexford's favorite daughter, makes her first real appearance here, while poor Sylvia wouldn't even be named (the Wexfords' older daughter is briefly alluded to in Best Man) until four books later in Shake Hands Forever.

On the whole, this is one of the lighter, less psychologically harrowing Rendells - I wouldn't dare to call it a romp, but the atmosphere all around is significantly more light-hearted than usual - but it's a solid story with some very engaging characters, and it's really in no way worse or less worth reading than Rendell's later darker, more complex and psychological novels.

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