On the whole I would say that, in contrast with her novels, Rendell's later works of short fiction are inferior to her earlier ones. In Rendell's case she had begun downplaying in the 1980s her Chief Inspector Wexford detective novels, in favor of the psychological suspense thrillers written under her own name (such as The Crocodile Bird, 1993, The Keys to the Street, 1996, and A Sight for Sore Eyes, 1998) and the multi-layered Barbara Vine mysteries that she launched in 1986, with A Dark-Adapted Eye (followed with such popular and critical successes as A Fatal Inversion, 1987, T he House of Stairs, 1988, King Solomon's Carpet, 1991, Asta's Book, 1993, No Night Is Too Long, 1994 and The Brimstone Wedding, 1995).Įven with the Wexford series, Rendell offered a sort of reboot of it in the 1990s, with much longer novels that are filled with greater detail about social concerns (racism and the exploitation of the poor in Simisola, 1994, environmentalism in Road Rage, 1997, spousal abuse and pedophilia in Harm Done, 1999), yet still have interesting mystery plots (if not up to the level, in this latter regard, with her best earlier Wexfords).īetween 19 Ruth Rendell also authored seven collections of short crime fiction.
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