A Sleeping Life
Written by Ruth Rendell
Narrated by George Baker
4/5
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About this audiobook
The body found under the hedge was that of a middle-aged woman, biggish and gaunt. The grey eyes were wide and staring, and in them Detective Chief Inspector Wexford thought he saw a sardonic gleam, a glare, even in death, of scorn. But that must have been his imagination, and imagination was almost all he had to go on
The body found under the hedge was that of a middle-aged woman, biggish and gaunt. The grey eyes were wide and staring, and in them Detective Chief Inspector Wexford thought he saw a sardonic gleam, a glare, even in death, of scorn. But that must have been his imagination, and imagination was almost all he had to go on.
The woman was a stranger. Her handbag held little more than three keys on a ring and forty-two pounds in a new wallet. There was nothing to give him her address, her occupation or even her identity – let alone any clues that might lead to her killer. The woman was dead, but, as Wexford knew only too well, death, by murder is, in a way, not an end but a beginning…
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.
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Reviews for A Sleeping Life
139 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wow, what a blockbuster ending ... It caught me sleeping. And when I looked back there were loads of clues. It was shortlisted for the Edgar but didn't make the final cut, perhaps because she already had bagged it several times. Rendell's procedurals are much preferable to her psychological thrillers, at least to my taste. The Edgar folks would beg to differ, though, at least judging from her laurels in that category. If you like the puzzle-solving aspect of crime fiction you might enjoy this one.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is one of those stories where Wexford seemed a bit plodding in coming to the same conclusion as me but then I can't really decide whether or not I had actually read this before, decades ago, when I was focussed on reading Wexford after Wexford.Wexford's search for the family of the dead woman under the hedge, Rhoda Comfrey, turns up remarkably little information, and in particular he can't find out where she has lived in London for the last twenty years. Wexford calls in a few favours among London police in a desperate attempt to stave off the Chief Constable's threat to hand the case over to Scotland Yard if he hasn't solved it by the end of the week.Wexford's personal life becomes complicated when his daughter Sylvia leaves her husband and adds herself and her two young sons to stay indefinitely with Dora and Reg. Sylvia is feeling much put-upon, in a women's lib way of thinking, and Reg tries to add his bit of common sense to the brew.I love the way Rendell weaves the byplay between Reg and his colleague Mike Burden into the investigation, while the ongoing story of Wexford family life hums along in the background.And Nigel Anthony does an excellent job with the narration.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Sleeping Life was originally published in 1964. The Women's Liberation movement is brought into this mystery as a subplot involving the marriage of one of Inspector Wexford's daughters, who wants to have a paying job, not the unpaid ones of wife and mother. While I liked the way Wexford treated his Dora after their daughter made a very cutting remark, I wish he had told that young woman that what she said to her mother wasn't true -- not her parents' relationship, anyway.In the end we do find out both why the victim was murdered and why it was so difficult to get her London address. I did not see it coming.As for Wexford's remark about the curate's egg, it comes from a 19th Century magazine cartoon in which the host tells the curate he fears he's gotten a bad egg and the curate assures him that parts of it are excellent.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a splendid writer Rendell is! Her ongoing characters, particularly of course Inspector Wexford, are always interesting, always changing, yet always consistent. And the characters that determine the plot of each novel, even when they are very strange, are fully realized and believable. Her plots are a delight, leading you forward and then back, but always keeping you involved. And her prose is a delight -- clear, supple, and pleasurable. In "A Sleeping Life", the good Inspector is faced with a dead woman who appears to have erased any information about the last twenty years of her life. And on the home front, he is faced with a daughter in the grip of Women's Liberation (the book was written in 1979). The book is full of side instghts about men and women, aging, and even hairlines. A delight.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I liked this - kept me guessing to the end.