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2.96 AVERAGE
2.96 AVERAGE
Carl has a big stash of medicines he has saved from his father's collection and when someone ends up dead after taking some tablets from that Carl's life changes, he shouldn't have accepted the 1st tenant who walked into the flat which was available for rent and he shouldn't have sold those tablets to his friend!
This was an ok book and there was nothing thrilling!
This was an ok book and there was nothing thrilling!
Ruth Rendell wrote complex, genre-defying novels of psychological suspense and mystery. Like the other great British author/life peer, P.D., Baroness James, Rendell (also a Baroness) offered a series with a recurring British inspector. Rendell also wrote dozens of stand-alone titles under her own name and the non de plume Barbara Vine. Her characters were often hapless and unlucky, sometimes evil, and other times simply inconsiderate. Her stories were always compelling, even when the readers knew exactly whodunit and when and where. Dark Corners, her final book, was apparently completed just before she was suddenly taken ill. I have to say that I suspect the manuscript was not truly complete; Dark Corners simply does not read like the usual complex works usually offered by Rendell. The main story is well executed from start to finish and the characters are fairly well drawn. There are two subplots that are very interesting, but don't seem truly integrated into the story. And the ending comes rather suddenly. I suspect that - given the time - Rendell would have polished Dark Corners to a much smoother finish. That being said, like all Rendell's work, her final novel rewards the reader.
I liked it - but I didn't really like the ending.....
Poor Carl - he just can't catch a break! They just push him too far! Though he DOES go a bit over the line - I'd say!
Poor Carl - he just can't catch a break! They just push him too far! Though he DOES go a bit over the line - I'd say!
A compelling and deliciously unnerving novel. It WAS written by Ruth Rendell after all… She penned 66 novels. I’m just so sad it is the last ‘new’ novel of hers I shall ever read.
Set in the affluent London suburb of Maida Vale, the novel features Carl Martin, a young novelist in his early twenties. Carl has recently inherited a property from his father – and in order to make ends meet he takes in a tenant for his upstairs rooms. The tenant, Dermot, works at a local veterinary clinic and is a regular church-goer. At first Dermot seems a model tenant – but that is short-lived…
It happens that Carl’s father left behind a good number of medicines in the bathroom. When Carl’s friend Stacy, a television actress, complains of gaining weight, he sells her some of the ‘diet’ capsules from his father’s stash. Tragically, Stacy dies as a result of her taking the DNP. Dermot had witnessed the transaction with Stacy and now exerts a sort of reverse blackmail upon Carl. He is not demanding money from him, rather he is withholding his rent instead. Rent that Carl depends upon to live – as his writing does not pay the bills…
Dermot inflicts such insidious psychological torment on Carl that the reader can feel his desperation. His life becomes unmanageable. He becomes irrationally frightened of Dermot – so much so that he has suicidal thoughts. The humiliation and shame that would come about if Dermot shared his knowledge – ruining his career and reputation – would be just too much.
The secondary protagonist of “Dark Corners” is Lizzie. An acquaintance of Stacey’s, Lizzie is a loner who enters Stacey’s lovely flat after her death and squats there. She make free and easy with Stacey’s belongings. Eating her food, drinking her drink, wearing her clothes. Yet Lizzie deludes herself into thinking she would never ‘steal’ anything…
Neither of the two protagonists in “Dark Corners” are particularly likable yet the reader raptly follows their increasingly desperate plights – much like fascinated onlookers at an accident scene…
“Dark corners” is a twisted story about twisted personalities. Ruth Rendell is a writer with a seemingly expert knowledge of human foibles and the vagaries of human behavior. She writes ‘WHYdunits’ rather than WHO dunits. This is a novel of abduction, murder and psychological torment – NOT a mystery as such.
Highly recommended!
I’m happy and grateful to Scribner via NetGalley and Edelweiss for providing me with digital ARCs of this novel. (Yes I requested from two different places in case one of them turned me down… I just couldn’t chance not getting to review Ruth Rendell’s last novel).
I’m sad that Ruth Rendell never lived to see her latest novel published…
For this review and others like it - visit my blog: Fictionophile
Set in the affluent London suburb of Maida Vale, the novel features Carl Martin, a young novelist in his early twenties. Carl has recently inherited a property from his father – and in order to make ends meet he takes in a tenant for his upstairs rooms. The tenant, Dermot, works at a local veterinary clinic and is a regular church-goer. At first Dermot seems a model tenant – but that is short-lived…
It happens that Carl’s father left behind a good number of medicines in the bathroom. When Carl’s friend Stacy, a television actress, complains of gaining weight, he sells her some of the ‘diet’ capsules from his father’s stash. Tragically, Stacy dies as a result of her taking the DNP. Dermot had witnessed the transaction with Stacy and now exerts a sort of reverse blackmail upon Carl. He is not demanding money from him, rather he is withholding his rent instead. Rent that Carl depends upon to live – as his writing does not pay the bills…
Dermot inflicts such insidious psychological torment on Carl that the reader can feel his desperation. His life becomes unmanageable. He becomes irrationally frightened of Dermot – so much so that he has suicidal thoughts. The humiliation and shame that would come about if Dermot shared his knowledge – ruining his career and reputation – would be just too much.
The secondary protagonist of “Dark Corners” is Lizzie. An acquaintance of Stacey’s, Lizzie is a loner who enters Stacey’s lovely flat after her death and squats there. She make free and easy with Stacey’s belongings. Eating her food, drinking her drink, wearing her clothes. Yet Lizzie deludes herself into thinking she would never ‘steal’ anything…
Neither of the two protagonists in “Dark Corners” are particularly likable yet the reader raptly follows their increasingly desperate plights – much like fascinated onlookers at an accident scene…
“Dark corners” is a twisted story about twisted personalities. Ruth Rendell is a writer with a seemingly expert knowledge of human foibles and the vagaries of human behavior. She writes ‘WHYdunits’ rather than WHO dunits. This is a novel of abduction, murder and psychological torment – NOT a mystery as such.
Highly recommended!
I’m happy and grateful to Scribner via NetGalley and Edelweiss for providing me with digital ARCs of this novel. (Yes I requested from two different places in case one of them turned me down… I just couldn’t chance not getting to review Ruth Rendell’s last novel).
I’m sad that Ruth Rendell never lived to see her latest novel published…
For this review and others like it - visit my blog: Fictionophile
I have not read a Ruth Rendell book in many years. This wasn't one of her best. This is a book about Carl who ends up being blackmailed by his tenant. In an attempt to make things right again he makes things worse. I found all the characters in this book with the exception of Carl's girlfriend very annoying. The central character was just plain stupid at times. The ending didn't blow me away. I think that this was Ruth's last book so that may be why it wasn't her best. Reading this has made me want to seek out some of her earlier novels.
A creepy read. Like watching a bad accident you can't stop
Unfortunately, I wasn't at all invested in what happened to the characters in this book. It's hard for me to read books where a character continuously makes life worse for himself or herself - over and OVER again - and incessantly complains about it. Just not my kind of story!
Couldn't get through it. Gave up when I realized I didn't like or care about a single character. Plus it was just too British; attitudes and conversational language and social mores and social classes were all just too foreign.
A wonderful era ended for Ruth Rendell fans on May 2, 2015 when the author died as the result of a stroke she suffered a few days earlier. Rendell produced mysteries under her real name and under the pen name Barbara Vine so regularly, for so many years, that it is still hard for fans to realize that there will be no more. Dark Corners, published about six months after her death, is the last of them.
As the story opens, Carl Martin is a writer with one published work to his name, but that novel, Death’s Door, had not exactly made him a rich man. Carl is living in a house recently inherited from his father, and because he has no source of income other than his writing, he decides to take on a border. Luckily for Carl, because the house is in one of London’s trendier neighborhoods, he easily locates a border willing to pay him 1200 pounds per month for the three upstairs rooms. That, though, would turn out to be a huge mistake, one Carl will regret for the rest of his life.
Along with the house, Carl inherited its contents, among them his father’s vast collection of homeopathic “medicines” and cure-alls – including a stash of diet pills that are as likely to kill the person taking them as they are to help her shed a few unwanted pounds. Unfortunately for Carl (and especially for his friend Stacey), that is exactly what happens when he lets Stacey talk him into selling her fifty of the pills. Carl’s border recognizes a good blackmail opportunity when he sees one, and after Stacey’s body is discovered, he begins to “reverse blackmail” Carl by refusing to pay his monthly rent.
In a side plot (which will tellingly crash into Carl’s world soon enough), a one-time friend of the dead Stacey’s has taken to living in Stacey’s apartment where she will remain until being forced out by the dead woman’s family. In her trademark fashion, Rendell explores deeply both the backgrounds of her characters and what is going on inside their heads. She wants her readers to understand why her characters do the things they do, but seldom has an entire cast of her characters been as flawed as the one in Dark Corners. Victims and criminals are, in fact, so much alike that the reader is hard pressed to find one to root for in this tale of blackmail, murder, and unintended consequences.
Dark Corners is not destined to become my favorite Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine novel. Nor is it, in my estimation, one of her better books, but because it is her last it will always have a place somewhere on my shelves and in my memory.
As the story opens, Carl Martin is a writer with one published work to his name, but that novel, Death’s Door, had not exactly made him a rich man. Carl is living in a house recently inherited from his father, and because he has no source of income other than his writing, he decides to take on a border. Luckily for Carl, because the house is in one of London’s trendier neighborhoods, he easily locates a border willing to pay him 1200 pounds per month for the three upstairs rooms. That, though, would turn out to be a huge mistake, one Carl will regret for the rest of his life.
Along with the house, Carl inherited its contents, among them his father’s vast collection of homeopathic “medicines” and cure-alls – including a stash of diet pills that are as likely to kill the person taking them as they are to help her shed a few unwanted pounds. Unfortunately for Carl (and especially for his friend Stacey), that is exactly what happens when he lets Stacey talk him into selling her fifty of the pills. Carl’s border recognizes a good blackmail opportunity when he sees one, and after Stacey’s body is discovered, he begins to “reverse blackmail” Carl by refusing to pay his monthly rent.
In a side plot (which will tellingly crash into Carl’s world soon enough), a one-time friend of the dead Stacey’s has taken to living in Stacey’s apartment where she will remain until being forced out by the dead woman’s family. In her trademark fashion, Rendell explores deeply both the backgrounds of her characters and what is going on inside their heads. She wants her readers to understand why her characters do the things they do, but seldom has an entire cast of her characters been as flawed as the one in Dark Corners. Victims and criminals are, in fact, so much alike that the reader is hard pressed to find one to root for in this tale of blackmail, murder, and unintended consequences.
Dark Corners is not destined to become my favorite Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine novel. Nor is it, in my estimation, one of her better books, but because it is her last it will always have a place somewhere on my shelves and in my memory.