Wolf to the Slaughter: An Inspector Wexford Mystery

By Ruth Rendell

“[Rendell is] undoubtedly one of the best writers of English mysteries and chiller-killer plots.”—Los Angeles Times

It was better than a hotel, this anonymous room on a secluded side street of a small country town. No register to sign, no questions asked, and for five bucks a man could have three hours of undisturbed, illicit lovemaking.

Then one evening a man with a knife turned the love nest into a death chamber. The carpet was soaked with blood -- but where was the corpse?

Meanwhile, a beautiful, promiscuous woman is missing—along with the bundle of cash she'd had in her pocket. The truth behind it all will keep even veteran mystery fans guessing through the very last page.

Praise for Wolf to the Slaughter

“The best mystery writer anywhere in the English-speaking world.”—The Boston Globe

“You cannot afford to miss Ruth Rendell.”—The New York Times Book Review

“For readers who have almost given up on mysteries . . . Rendell may be just the woman to get them started again.”—Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9780307829528

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell (1930–2015) won three Edgar Awards, the highest accolade from Mystery Writers of America, as well as four Gold Daggers and a Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre from England’s prestigious Crime Writ­ers’ Association. Her remarkable career spanned a half century, with more than sixty books published. A member of the House of Lords, she was one of the great literary figures of our time.

Reviews for Wolf to the Slaughter

[charlie68_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A good mystery made great by a fantastic reader making the characters come alive. It's cathartic to hang around Wexford, Burden and the gang as they make sense of a chaotic world.

[crazeedi73 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Her books get better as I go through the series! Looking forward to getting #4 of the series

[jalenv_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

WOLF TO THE SLAUGHTER isn't one of the more memorable Inspector Wexfield mysteries. I checked it out again because if I hadn't written when I'd listened to it not quite a year ago, I'd have sworn I must have returned it unheard. As I listened to it again, I recognized some scenes, but most of them I didn't -- including who did it and why.Is the beautiful Anita Margolis missing or dead? If dead, where's her body? Her artist brother, Rupert, is absolutely hopeless at the details of everyday life. Surely he had no motive for getting rid of the sister who handled all those tiresome matters.What about the other men in Anita's life? More than one of those fellows doesn't make a good showing under the spotlight of a police investigation.Ruby Branch, a charwoman (a 'cleaning lady' in American English) trying to make a little extra income, and petty crook George 'Monkey' Matthews provide clues as well as comic relief.The story of a wife who left a better husband for an unworthy one is a sad subplot (good cautionary tale, though).Besides having to put up with self-righteous Detective Inspector Mike Burden, there's snobbish, ambitious young Detective Constable Mark Drayton to endure.I'm afraid I have no sympathy for Drayton's dismay when he finds himself falling under the spell of beautiful Linda Grover, whose parents keep an ugly village shop. (His attitude toward Linda and her parents is rather like Mr. Darcy toward Elizabeth and her family in Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.) Yes, her parents are making a drudge of their daughter, but is Drayton likely to be her knight in shining armor? Aside from finding narrator Robin Bailey's voice for Inspector Wexford less sympathetic than I'm used to from later novels, he does a very good job.Note: If you're not familiar with British English, what we Americans call the trunk of a car they call a 'boot,' just as 'bonnet' is their term for what we call the 'hood'.Ah, well, this is only book three in the series. If I didn't remember much while I was listening, at least it wasn't at all boring listening to it a second time. The title did make sense at the end -- good twist and a good pun.

[bjellis_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is, I think, the first of Rendell's Inspector Wexford series where she really shows her startling ability to portray interactions, step by step unpeeling things with psychological accuracy. I found this fascinating. It was like watching a sculptor at work.

[julesjones_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The second Inspector Wexford novel, and as with the first, very much a 1960s novel. It gave me even more of a sense of "the past is a foreign country" than the first one, because a major plot thread involves one of the characters renting out rooms in her house by the evening, for students to use for studying in private, nudge nudge, wink, wink, and this activity gets her threatened with being charged with the offence of keeping a disorderly house. Because in this time period, unmarried couples found it difficult to find somewhere to have sex, and renting rooms to them for such a purpose was conduct liable to outrage public decency, and thus could be a criminal offence...An eccentric artist reports his sister Anita as missing. Since his problem appears to be largely that he's too away with the fairies to cope without her for even a night, Burden doesn't take it seriously, until Wexford connects it with an anonymous letter stating that a girl called Ann has been murdered. There's no concrete evidence of murder, but the artist is adamant that his sister would have left him a note if she'd gone away for a few days, and there are other odd things about her absence that lead Wexford to dig deeper. Anita was well known to have a large selection of men friends, and it's entirely possible that one of them has killed her out of jealousy. But even when he finds evidence that blood has indeed been shed, Wexford has trouble putting together the pieces to make a coherent picture. Too many alibis that may or may not be false, too many dangling loose ends, too many people holding clues who are frightened to tell the truth. And no corpse...It's a good read, with a lot of twists packed into a short novel, and a good eye for character detail. But I thought it perhaps a little too choppy as a result. And I did find the period mores oddly jarring, more so than with period mysteries from some other writers.