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A Novel
by Ruth Rendell
Book Reviewed by:In this psychologically explosive story from "one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation" (People), the discovery of bones in a tin box sends shockwaves across a group of long-time friends.
In the waning months of the second World War, a group of children discover an earthen tunnel in their neighborhood outside London. Throughout the summer of 1944—until one father forbids it—the subterranean space becomes their "secret garden," where the friends play games and tell stories.
Six decades later, beneath a house on the same land, construction workers uncover a tin box containing two skeletal hands, one male and one female. As the discovery makes national news, the friends come together once again, to recall their days in the tunnel for the detective investigating the case. Is the truth buried among these aging friends and their memories?
This impromptu reunion causes long-simmering feelings to bubble to the surface. Alan, stuck in a passionless marriage, begins flirting with Daphne, a glamorous widow. Michael considers contacting his estranged father, who sent Michael to live with an aunt after his mother vanished in 1944. Lewis begins remembering details about his Uncle James, an army private who once accompanied the children into the tunnels, and who later disappeared.
In The Girl Next Door Rendell brilliantly shatters the assumptions about age, showing that the choices people make—and the emotions behind them—remain as potent in late life as they were in youth.
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He was handsome man. A handsome boy, his mother called him, because she started praising his looks when he was five. Before that, he received the compliments children necessarily get: "Beautiful baby" and "Isn't he lovely?" His father was never there. The boy left school at fourteen—you could then—and went to work in a market garden, a slaughterhouse, and finally a cosmetics factory. The boss's daughter fell in love with him. He was twenty by then, so they got married. Anita's father said he would stop her having the money her grandmother had left her, but in the event he was too tenderhearted to do so. It wasn't a large sum but it was enough to buy a house on the Hill in Loughton, twelve miles from London but almost in the country. Woody, as his mother and his wife called him, as someone at school had first named him, hated work and decided never to do any more as long as he lived. There was enough left to live on but whether for the rest of his life ...
If you don’t usually like mysteries you will like this one. I can say that with a certain degree of confidence because this is more character study than mystery. Although as a longtime mystery and Rendell fan I can say, also, that this is a very satisfying whodunit...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Donna Chavez).
Patricia Cornwell
Unequivocally the most brilliant mystery writer of our time. Stephen King
No one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, istability, and malignant coincidence.
Even in the 21st Century, to send a letter to the Queen of England one's envelope might be addressed simply: Her Majesty The Queen. Buckingham Palace. London. No street address or postcode is necessary. Her royal home has a name. As such it follows an ancient and still-popular British custom; naming one's house. While numbered street addresses have replaced names in cities and towns, most houses in rural areas have only ever been known by name and some residents in towns and cities choose to give their homes names in addition to their number.
A survey taken a few years ago found that roughly one third of United Kingdom respondents noted they either had lived or still lived in a house that had a name. Nearly an equal number ...
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If you liked The Girl Next Door, try these:
by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Published 2018
For fans of The Secret History and The Poison Tree, a novel about a woman whose family and identity are threatened by the secrets of her past, from the New York Times bestselling author of She's Not There.
by Peter May
Published 2014
From acclaimed author and television dramatist Peter May comes the first book in the Lewis Trilogy - a riveting mystery series set on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, a formidable and forbidding world where tradition rules and people adhere to ancient ways of life.
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