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Not in the Flesh: A Wexford Novel (Inspector Wexford Mystery) | 
| Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $12.94
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 2535
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0307406814
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780307406811
ASIN: 0307406814
Publication Date: June 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: New in shrinkwrap!Ships within hours from Charleston, SC. Established seller with nearly 10 years of online history.
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Product Description
A new Chief Inspector Wexford mystery from the author who Time magazine has called “the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world.”
When the truffle-hunting dog starts to dig furiously, his master’s first reaction is delight at the size of the clump the dog has unearthed: at the going rate, this one truffle might be worth several hundred pounds. Then the dirt falls away to reveal not a precious mushroom but the bones and tendons of what is clearly a human hand.
In Not in the Flesh, Chief Inspector Wexford tries to piece together events that took place eleven years earlier, a time when someone was secretly interred in a secluded patch of English countryside. Now Wexford and his team will need to interrogate everyone who lives nearby to see if they can turn up a match for the dead man among the eighty-five people in this part of England who have disappeared over the past decade. Then, when a second body is discovered nearby, Wexford experiences a feeling that’s become a rarity for the veteran policeman: surprise.
As Wexford painstakingly moves to resolve these multiple mysteries, long-buried secrets are brought to daylight, and Ruth Rendell once again proves why she has been hailed as our greatest living mystery writer.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
Only Wexford fans will love this one July 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Chief Inspector Wexford appears for the 21st time in Ruth Rendell's latest police procedural. Still stationed in Kingsmarkham with the colleagues he has spent most of his career with, Wexford is a little older and wiser, noticeably more impatient and a bit crankier. Yet his experiences with the darker elements of human nature have made him more compassionate.
NOT IN THE FLESH begins as a good mystery. Tom Belbury is walking with his dog, in search of truffles, which he sells to add a bit of money to his pension. His Honey is a terrific truffle tracer, so when the old man sees the size of the one she excavated, he thinks he has a very valuable specimen. What the pet's paw prowess has uncovered, however, is a human hand!
Wexford and his team are called to the scene and begin an investigation; not only do they need to find this man's killer, they must try to identify the victim. The condition of his decomposed body suggests that he's been dead and buried for about 11 years, and tatters of fabric found around his skeleton suggest that he was wrapped in a purple bed sheet. His grave was carved into what was supposed to be a trench to be used for a housing development that was never built.
Back at the station, Burden walks into Wexford's office to report that the land where the dog walker found the body belongs to John Grimble, an irascible and unpleasant fellow whose taciturnity makes him difficult to deal with. He is bitter because when he wanted to develop four houses on his land, the zoning board refused him permission. The grudge he carries against his neighbors for campaigning against his house plans is as large as the chip on his shoulder. He and his wife are the sort of people who were old before they ever had a chance to be young. Wexford dislikes them on sight.
When the team is assembled back at the station, they get a PowerPoint presentation of the neighborhood and background information on its inhabitants from DS Goldsmith. Almost all of the residents are older or even elderly, and the part of Kingsmarkham where they live is known as the geriatric ward. The only person who ever built a reputation outside of Flagford is an elderly writer named Owen Tredown. He lives in a Victorian villa with his current wife, Maeve, and ex-wife Claudia. This particular group of oddballs keeps the gossips busy but seem to be harmless. Tredown has written a number of books based on Bible stories, but his masterpiece was a fantasy novel unlike any of the others in style or content. At the moment, that one is being made into a movie, and ironically Wexford's daughter is playing the leading lady.
As things move along, another body is found buried under some wooden boards and debris, in the basement of the old cottage on Grimble's property. This one seems to be dead about eight years, and nobody has a clue as to who he could possibly be. But this man was shot, so the cause of death is known.
Another neighbor, 84-year-old Mrs. McNeil, is a widow who is clearly terrified and hiding something. Damon Coleman, the only black man on the team, gets the dubious job of interviewing her. She has no choice but to let him into her house, despite insisting that she has nothing to say. Once she begins to express what she thinks of her former neighbors, she just goes on and on. But does she or any of her secrets relate to the two dead men?
While all of this is going on, a subplot not really related to this case is unfolding very quickly in Kingsmarkham's Somali community: female circumcision. Although not a major theme, it is both shocking and fascinating. One of the Wexford daughters is a social worker who tries to keep track of the families with little girls in order to stop their mutilation. Two courageous women from the community tell Wexford that one three-year-old girl in particular is in dire jeopardy of becoming another victim of this cruel and barbaric ancient ritual.
NOT IN THE FLESH is populated by an abundance of characters: some loony, some serious, some kind and some evil, but all drawn clearly by their creator. They are a representative microcosm of humanity and reflect some of Rendell's opinions in regard to certain prejudices that still filter through the British class system. She has always had a spot-on eye for detail and continues to shine a light into the darkest corners of the human heart.
Despite the plethora of bodies and unhelpful eccentrics who have a stock of red herrings, the Kingsmarkham constabulary solves their cases. Yet NOT IN THE FLESH is a flawed book. Aside from the disparate ages of the characters (if counted in real time), some of the prose is not as sharp as it could be. Also, while issues in the book are set in this century and Rendell has updated social changes, many of the characters are mired in a past that is long gone. Even Wexford often laments that he misses what he believes was a simpler world, especially when it comes to computers and other technology. Sometimes the plot meanders off its straight and narrow path, but never in such a way as to spoil anything for the reader.
Rendell's fans immediately will recognize NOT IN THE FLESH as a Ruth Rendell novel, and new readers will not be disappointed either. And since Rendell is known for writing approximately one book a year, the next one is surely on its way.
--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
 BOTH AUTHOR AND NARRATOR IN TOP FORM July 3, 2008
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
This audio book is more than a double treat, it's a sure fire can't-stop-listening-to winner when you pair the estimable acting talents of Tim Curry as narrator and the award winning writing of Ruth Rendell.
Curry won many of us with his unforgettable debut in the cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He has made numerous screen appearances since then, playing diverse roles in such films as Kinsey, Charlie's Angels, The Hunt for Red October and Annie. This actor simply can't be pigeon-holed - on stage he has been nominated thrice for a Tony.
His audio book narrations are as diverse as his professional career ranging from children's titles to science fiction to romance to fantasy and, of course, this stellar rendering of Not In The Flesh. For starters Curry has a wonderful voice, low, deep, strong. It is malleable, if you will, easily moving from tone to tone, intonation to intonation. Born in Britain he retains a hint of a British accent which, of course, serves us well in this story.
What more can be said about Ruth Rendell or how much more praise can be heaped upon her? Surely she has numerous mantels to accommodate all her awards, among them are three Edgars, three Gold Daggers, a Silver Dagger, and on it goes.
For this reader/listener Inspector Wexford is one of her finest creations. Wexford was introduced to us some 35 years ago and by now he's an old friend to many. "Old" is a key word here as he's grown a bit more codger-like with the passage of time, yet just as sharp, clever, and opinionated as ever.
This time out a truffle hunter and his sniffing dog are having great good luck in the Sussex countryside - that is until the competent canine unearths what's left of a human hand. It's left to Wexford to identify the deceased who has probably been hidden in the ground for over a decade. Another confounding problem for the master detective is the inordinate number of people in that area who have simply vanished.
As always Rendell's cast of characters is pure delight from close-mouthed residents to workmen who may or may not have seen anything to a downright nasty old lady with "loglike swollen legs."
To read a work by Rendell is stay-up-late pleasure; to hear it is prime time entertainment.
- Gail Cooke
 Don't bother July 3, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
Perhaps it is just me, but Ruth Rendell has always been a disappointment; her new procedural "Not in the Flesh" reinforces that impression.
The writing is wooden, the characters one-dimensional and the plot obvious. I usually do not guess the mystery but I figured it out by page 130 of the 300 page book.
I do not understand the hoopla that surrounds Rendell's novels. I periodically read her books in an attempt to convince myself of her merit. So far, I have found myself consistently disenchanted.
 Disappointing June 30, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a fervent reader of all mysteries British, I must say I was very disappointed in this one. This story was slow-moving and the mystery easily solved. The screed on female genital mutilation was entirely unnecessary to the advancement of the plot. And the constant references to women's issues and political correctness are annoying, too. All right already......we get it! Not worth the effort to read.............
Excavations June 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ruth Rendell's 21st in the Inspector Wexford series amply demonstrates how her most frequent protagonist shows no signs of stopping, or of allowing himself to become outdated: here he wrestles with the matter of two unearthed bodies that cannot be identified and with the very timely matter of British attitudes towards female circumcision among its growing African population. Perhaps the only thing that shows Rendell a bit out of step is all of her characters obsession with what they themselves call "political correctness": whether against it, all for it, or just mystified by it (whatever it exactly is), they all seem to be behaving as if they were in the front line of the culture wars in the early 1990s and refer to it constantly. It gets very distracting. The subplot involving Wexford's friends among the Kingsmarkham Somali community and their practice of circumcision among their young girls never seems wholly integrated into the major murder mystery, which starts off brilliantly though its solution is much too easily apparent three-quarters of the way through the text. There are, as always, plenty of Rendell's superb gallery of eccentric suspects, particularly a snobbish upper-class widow who inspires both sympathy and revulsion in Wexford and his assistants.
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