Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823
EAN num: 9780091742928
Format: Import
ISBN number: 0091742927
Label: Hutchinson
Manufacturer: Hutchinson
Page Count: 186
Printing Date: 1990
Publishing house: Hutchinson
Sale Popularity Level: 6660110
Studio: Hutchinson
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Rated by buyers 
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It was not stated that this was a reprint of a very old Inspector Wexford mystery by Ruth Rendell. I don't think I would have bought it had I known. I read it anyway---but I would have liked to have known the facts before hand.
Rated by buyers -
When Amazon sent me the notice that this book was coming out in September, I assumed it was a new book and so ordered it, as Rendell is one of my favorite mystery authors (prefer her books under the pseudonym Barbara Vine but like the Rendell books, too). Imagine my chagrin to realize it was just a reprint of a 1967 book, which I had read years ago. I will now check every time Amazon suggests a book to me to make sure that it is a current book and not just an old one with a new cover. In other words, a big waste of my money (but no reflection on Rendell, rather on Amazon).
Rated by buyers 
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I'm a huge fan of Ruth Rendell no matter what she writes, so I am catching up with some Chief Inspector Wexford books that I have missed. This is an early one in the sereies, but it's a good one. No one does studies in human psychology like Ms. Rendell, and this book delves into the mind of a young and up and coming police officer, and the demons he fights when love interferes with an investigation. A girl has disappeared and Wexford, Burden and Drayton are trying to determine whether or not a murder has been committed even though there's no body. What they do uncover is a household full of some secrets and we know these secrets inexorably will affect young Drayton before the case is solved. Excellent story as well as a mystery.
Rated by buyers -
Anita Margolis, young, beautiful, carefree, has vanished into thin air. She left her home to attend a party one wet evening, but has not been seen since. She is reported missing soon after by her brother, whom she shared a flat with, the acclaimed but eccentric artist Rupert Margolis. Inspector Burden quickly forms an impression of a wanton young girl simply gone off somewhere with a boyfriend having neglected to let anyone know. After all, she was that sort of woman, in Burden's opinion. However, Wexford has his doubts, and those doubts will soon be confirmed, and they will soon find themselves enmeshed in a case that will throw every assumption they make into doubt.
This is an early Wexford book, and it is brilliant. A simple notion, but true. One of the best of the entire series, actually, the fact of its quality equally matches that of the novels she is still producing and marks her out clearly as possibly the most reliable and captivating novelist of her generation, such is her constant unfailing ability. She writes absolutely brilliantly, with an emotional detachedness that makes it so much more powerful when she decides that now is the time to probe in the darkness of a particular characters mind and motivations. And those characters are unendingly fascinating, completely human yet with a shadowy darkness to them, and flawlessly depicted.
But it is not just her characters that mark her books out as special. Setting and story meld in equally with character in the most successful books to create a compelling whole, and Rendell accomplishes this with ease. The fictional Kingsmarkham is almost as tangible and atmospheric as the London she uses as the setting for some of her other non-Wexford novels. The reader feels they could easily be supplanted into the story, onto the streets of this fictional town, and yet already know its environs intimately.
And then, of course, the story too is near-perfect. It is dark, it is clever, it is affecting, it is psychologically acute, it is realistic (despite the false idea that these kind of traditional procedural novels tend not to be), it is engrossing, as well as being a plethora of other laudable adjectives as well. It shifts and moves and surprises and has excellent pace, carrying the reader through on a breathless ride - secured in by the mesmeric hand-at-your-throat grip of the prose - until a tension-filled conclusion, which leaves more than one character irredeemably altered for life.
Wolf to the Slaughter is simply yet another excellent novel from the woman who is, in my mind, the best writer in the world today. And that is all there is to it.
Rated by buyers -
Ruth Rendell is a talented writer, but I often have problems with elements of her plots being a little bit predictable-- this is definitely not the case with _Wolf to the Slaughter_. The book constantly suprises and manages to do so without any deus ex machina tricks that might make it unconvincing.
A mysterious note that claims someone was murdered, a stain on a carpet that may or may not be blood, and a gold lighter with a leading inscription-- these are the only clues that Wexford and his crew have to what might not even be a crime. Mix in a slightly mad painter, three women who gave their hearts unwisely, and a young policeman in love for the very first time and you've got a compelling mystery novel which is one of the best Rendells I've read to date.
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