No Man's Nightingale: An Inspector Wexford Novel Author: Ruth Rendell | Language: English | ISBN:
B00CCX6ND6 | Format: EPUB
No Man's Nightingale: An Inspector Wexford Novel Description
From crime legend Ruth Rendell, the gripping new novel in her “beloved” (USA Today) Inspector Wexford series, which will soon mark its fiftieth anniversaryA female vicar named Sarah Hussain is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham vicarage. Maxine, the gossipy cleaning woman who finds the body, happens to also be in the employ of former Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford and his wife. When called on by his old deputy, Wexford, who has taken to reading
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a retirement project, leaps at the chance to tag along with the investigators. Wexford is intrigued by the unusual circumstances of the murder, but he’s also desperate to escape the chatty Maxine.
A single mother to a teenage girl, Hussain was a woman working in a male-dominated profession. Of mixed race and an outspoken church reformer, she had turned some in her congregation against her, including the conservative vicar’s warden. Could one of her enemies in the church have gone so far as to kill her? Or could it have been the elderly next-door gardener with a muddled alibi?
As Wexford searches the vicar’s house alongside the police, he sees a book, Newman’s
Apologia Pro Vita Sua, lying on Hussain’s bedside table. Inside it is a letter serving as a bookmark. Without thinking much, Wexford puts it into his pocket. Wexford soon realizes he has made a grave error—he’s removed a piece of evidence from the crime scene. Yet what he finds inside begins to illuminate the murky past of Sarah Hussain. Is there more to her than meets the eye?
No Man’s Nightingale is Ruth Rendell’s masterful twenty-fourth installment in one of the great crime series of all time.
- File Size: 1179 KB
- Print Length: 292 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0091953855
- Publisher: Scribner (November 5, 2013)
- Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00CCX6ND6
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,620 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford may be retired, however he's just as smart and intuitive as ever. Well, perhaps he is a tad more crotchety, especially when his reading of his beloved Decline and Fall Of the Roman Empire is interrupted, but for this reader that makes him all the more endearing. While he's reasonably content in retirement he does miss investigating crimes so when Detective Superintendent Burden asks his old boss to join in the chase Wexford doesn't hesitate.
As it turns out this is an especially intriguing case - the Rev. Sarah Hussain, recently appointed vicar of St. Peter's Church has been strangled. To say that her appointment was greeted with enthusiasm would be a gross understatement. She is not only female but biracial and a single mother. Seems that bigotry and racism are alive and well in Kingsmarkham. But would that be enough to commit brutal murder?
There is no shortage of suspects from Dennis Cuthbert, a church member who not only objected to Sarah but to her modernization of the liturgy, Gerald Watson, an old flame of Sarah's who had taken to what some might stalking her and more. In addition to the coterie of suspects subplots abound including the jam ne'er-do-well Jeremy Legg has gotten himself into by the return of his ex-wife when Jeremy is illegally renting her flat. As it happens his tenants are Jason Sams and family. Jason is the son of Wexford's non-stop gossipy cleaning lady. Then, who is the father of Sarah's daughter, Clarissa?
Burden arrests gardener Duncan Crisp for the murder. Wexford doesn't believe the man is guilty which causes a rift between the two investigators. Days aren't at all sunny in Kingsmarkham and environs, which isn't due to the weather.
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