End in Tears

May 29, 2006
Bestseller Rendell's riveting new novel in her Chief Inspector Wexford series (The Babes in the Wood
, etc.) links two disparate worlds—a child-surrogacy ring and the construction trade. A teenage mother, Amber Marshalson, is found dead in the grass outside her home in Kingsmarkham, her skull crushed by a piece of brick. A short time later, Amber's pregnant friend, Megan Bartlow, turns up murdered in a seedy, about-to-be-rehabbed Victorian row house. Suspicions center on a tall man wearing a hooded fleece jacket. Against this sinister backdrop stands Wexford, who's in lion-in-winter mode. He's irked and perplexed by modern life, by the casual way young girls conceive babies, by the sprawl devouring the once-lush Sussex countryside, even by his own fractious family. But he never loses the anger and dedication that propel him to solve crimes and understand evil. While Rendell fans may find this not quite up to the level of her most recent non-Wexford, Thirteen Steps Down
(2005), they should be well satisfied.