SHOTS columnist MIKE RIPLEY was abroad when
he heard of the death of Ruth Rendell on 2nd May. Immediately on his
return he has penned this personal appreciation of one of the outstanding
talents of British crime writing.
In
the crowded world of crime fiction, Ruth Rendell seemed determined to prove, if
nothing else, that you could have quantity and quality in a career spanning
half-a-century which saw her produce some 68 novels and over 30 short stories,
garnering an unprecedented, and unlikely to be surpassed, four Gold Daggers
from the Crime Writers Association.
Born
in South Woodford, London, in 1930 to an English father and Swedish mother,
Ruth Barbara Grasemann was educated at the Girls High School in Loughton in Essex
and began her working life as a cub reporter on a local newspaper, the Chigwell
Times. Her journalistic ambitions were curtailed when told to cover an annual
tennis club dinner. Instead of attending the event, she wrote her story from
notes provided beforehand and failed spectacularly to mention the fact that the
guest speaker had collapsed and died mid-speech! Ruth always said that she
resigned from the newspaper just before being fired.
It
was through newspapers, however, that she met her husband Don Rendell, who was
to become a respected Fleet Street journalist. They were married in 1950 and
divorced in 1975 only to famously re-marry in 1977.
Legend
has it that Ruth wrote two novels before her third, From Doon With Death, was
Not
all the adaptations were of Ruth’s Wexford series. Those might have been her ‘bread and butter’ but they were far from
the only string to her bow. She interspersed the Wexfords with stand-alone
thrillers of psychological suspense and in one purple patch (a very dark
purple) in 1976-77 she produced what many critics, including this one, regarded
as her best work: A Demon in My View,
which won her first Gold Dagger, and A
Judgement in Stone, a book which tells the unsuspecting reader ‘whodunnit’
(and why) in the very first line.
Yet
there was a third strand to Ruth Rendell’s writing – novels which eschewed
mystery and drama in favour of psychological insight and specific moral issues
– which required a pen-name, though if the identity of the author who was
Barbara Vine was meant to be a secret, it was not kept for long. From A Dark Adapted Eye in 1986, ‘Barbara
Vine’ novels were a critical and commercial success, and pushed Ruth Rendell
into the orbit of serious literary fiction.
For
many a crime-writer, there would have been the temptation to abandon their
formative detective series, but Ruth Rendell kept faith with Wexford and even
developed the series beyond the standard mystery format to examine specific
social issues. She called these later novels her ‘political Wexfords’.
In
1997 she was made a Labour Life Peer and took the title Baroness Rendell of
Babergh,
I
first met Ruth Rendell in 1989 at a party in Colchester thrown at the home of
the then Literary Editor of the Daily Mirror, George Thaw, who insisted that I
go and introduce myself the moment she arrived. As a fledgling crime writer
with one novel and one short story to his name, to say I was nervous was
putting it mildly. Ruth had published almost 30 novels and goodness knows how
many short stories. She was already a major award winner, a named dramatic ‘brand’ on television and had recently
established her second identity as Barbara Vine.
No,
saying I was nervous didn’t come close: in awe would be more accurate. Unable
to think of anything coherent, let alone sensible, to say, I babbled something
along the lines of ‘I’m a member of the
Crime Writers too.’
With
the timing of a great comedienne Ruth paused, looked at her wine glass, paused
again, then looked at the ceiling before answering: ‘The Crime Writers? Oh, I only go there when they give me something.’
Ironically
the next time I met up with her was at a Crime Writers’ Association dinner
where they were indeed giving both of us something. She was receiving her
fourth Gold Dagger for King Solomon’s
Carpet whilst I was seated somewhere below the salt to receive the Last
Laugh Award. One of the highlights of that dinner was an emotional speech by
actor George Baker, who played Chief Inspector Wexford in the television
series, expressing his delight at being ‘one
of the few mortals who can claim to have met their Maker’.
Among
the royalty of British crime writing, there were famously four ‘Queens of
Crime’ – Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh – from the 1930s but in the
1960s two further queens emerged: Ruth and P.D. James. Of the two, Phyllis was
clearly the heiress to Dorothy L. Sayers’ personal throne when it came to the
morality of the traditional detective story whereas Ruth was more interested in
examining obsessive, often psychotic behaviour, unveiling family secrets and
never being afraid to tackle unpleasant subjects. In this respect, many of her
books had more in common with the work of Patricia Highsmith than with the
accepted royal family of crime and, like Highsmith, she often came across, to
those who did not know her, as something of a prickly character, prompting one
journalist to coin the title ‘the Ice
Queen of Crime’.
As
with any highly successful writer, there were rumours – invariably started by
less-successful writers – of her being somewhat impatient if not ‘short’ at public bookshop signing
sessions. I have absolutely no evidence for this and the nearest I came to
gathering any personally was a rather bizarre incident which we subsequently
laughed about hysterically.
One
Saturday morning my wife and I were paying a visit to a large DIY superstore in
Colchester with the delightful prospect of a week-end decorating a spare
bedroom ahead of us. As we wandered down a long aisle stacked high with cans of
paint, we spotted a table at the far end of the aircraft-hangar of a store. On
the table were piles of books and seated behind it, completely alone, was an
immaculately-dressed lady wielding a pen. Now I knew the DIY store was linked
at the time to bookseller W.H. Smith but I had no idea they were selling the
latest crime fiction, signed by a bestselling author, between the paint and the
plumbing sections at 9.30 a.m. on a Saturday. Before it had really sunk in that
it was indeed Ruth Rendell, a figure jumped from the paint stacks to confront us.
It was Ruth’s husband Don, who was anxious to head us off before we got to the
table. ‘There’s been a cock-up,’ he hissed conspiratorially. ‘We thought the signing was going to be in
the bookshop and she’s in a filthy mood.’
‘I don’t blame her,’ I said, but we took
our cue from Don and sneaked out of the store via the lighting department.
I
can understand why she might have been thought severe and rather aloof, but in
conversation with her it was never too difficult to make her smile and when she
did, her face really did light up. She could also tell a good funny story and I
especially remember being treated to the saga of her discomfort when she
received an award from the Swedish Academy of Detection which turned out to be
‘a ruddy great revolver’ and her dilemma at not wanting it but not wanting to
offend her hosts. Thinking quickly, she said with deep regret that whilst she
appreciated the accolade, she could not possible carry the actual award (it was
not clear whether the pistol had been disabled or not) back to the UK through
airport security. Honour seemed to be
satisfied and no more was said, but Ruth was horrified on her return to Suffolk
to find that the postman had already delivered a large, heavy and potentially
lethal package bearing a Stockholm postmark!
I
last saw Ruth at her 75th birthday party, held in the Red Lion, one of the pubs
nearest to Parliament (she had been in the House of Lords that day), when she
was on sparkling form. I recall, poignantly, telling her that I was still
technically recovering from a stroke to which she replied: ‘Don’t be ridiculous! You’re far too young to
have had a stroke.’
I
didn’t argue. One rarely did with Ruth.
