Reviews

The Blood Doctor by Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell

jenmcmaynes's review against another edition

3.0

I love mysteries that aren't centered around a murder, so I was really into this story. The "present day" story was a little less gripping than that of the blood doctor, but all in all, it was pretty decent. A good beach read (I, in fact, read it on a cruise!).

genizah's review against another edition

3.0

This was going to get four stars, but then I figured out the entire endgame from the big twist two-thirds of the way through. This made the last third interminable because the narrator drew the entirely wrong conclusion from that twist, and bumbled around until someone explained it to him in the last few pages. The first two-thirds are still pretty good though.

*Warning for detailed discussion of miscarriages.

msjoanna's review against another edition

3.0

Vine creates a wonderful story here. Even though I'd guessed the outcome before the ending, it did not detract from the interest of the story. Of particular (and surprising) interest were the details about the House of Lords and the life of the main character as a Lord. Who would've guessed that the author could make the House of Lords intriguing? The author does a superb job of making the tracing of family geneology into an interesting mystery rather than a boring paper trail. Overall, I enjoyed the book and thought the writing was excellent.

wjread's review against another edition

3.0

It was an interesting story about families with hemophilia, but it was too long, too detailed, a bit predictable, and the secondary stories distracted from the main one.

nocto's review against another edition

Vine seems to have changed her tune a bit over the years since she parted company with her alter ego Ruth Rendell. I'm not finding her books as spookily creepy these days but they are still very good. In fact I think this is probably my favourite story of hers.

Blood is the overarching theme of this novel in several ways. The narrator Martin Nanther, 4th Lord Nanther is losing his heriditary seat in the House of Lords reforms. He's also writing the biography of his great grandfather Henry, the 1st Lord Nanther who was a doctor specialising in diseases of the blood especially haemophilia. Henry received his baronetcy from Victoria, he was one of the royal physicans. The biographical research involves searching out his blood relatives from his family tree. His wife Jude is also suffering from miscarriage after miscarriage. Occassionally I found the continual theme of blood a bit icky and would have preferred that they'd stuck with describing things through the means of genes rather than the nineteenth century descriptions of blood but it's not that sqeamish a book.

As with the last Vine I read (The Brimstone Wedding) I thought that there was scarcely any mystery here, Martin might not see what's going on but it's pretty obvious to the reader. There's a huge cast of occassional characters and the family trees in the front of the book help to keep them straight. I thought Vine did a good job of making the book so populated and yet tractable. Personally I found the story fascinating, the plot's long and tangled but not opaque and the mostly present tense writing isn't obtrusive as it sometimes can be (it took me a long time to even notice it). Definitely a really good book but one so out of genre that I'd hesitate to recommend it.

sireno8's review against another edition

5.0

Really terrific book. It took me a little while to get into b/c the narrator is a biographer doing a lot of family tree research so a lot of names and relationships right off the bat, plus he's in the House of Lords so a lot of parlimentary procedure right off the bat, but once i got into it, i really could not put it down. BV (RR) has a way of sucking you into a story or several stories at the same time and this is her most complex and best yet. Utterly fascinating and compelling. The very ending seemed a bit anticlimactic to me until I realized the full impact of what had happened. Great!

terese_utan_h's review against another edition

dark informative mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

littoface's review against another edition

2.0

The topic was certainly interesting and the book makes an attempt to thread the current age with the past, but the pacing is completely off. The book trudges along so slowly that it's hard to maintain an interest. A number of themes are very deliberately and unnecessarily repeated (blood blood blood!), every attractive female apparently resembles the narrator's wife, and a huge number of characters and names make it hard to keep up at times. If you are observant it isn't difficult to figure out the big reveal about a quarter of the way through the book.

If the story had been told in about half the length, it would have been great. As it stands, The Blood Doctor requires some patience to get through.

thecommonswings's review

3.0

The first whodunnit I ever solved was Christie’s The Mirror Cracked From Side to Side and there’s definitely some similarities between that book and this which, again, I managed to work out with about a hundred pages to go. It’s a fine book, as all Rendell’s Vine books are, but because the big twist is rather melodramatic and lurid she tries to hide it by making the book stately and melancholy and as such it really does drag in places. The plot about the House of Lords is fascinating, and obviously one dear to her heart, but at times seems a tad dry and although it’s purpose makes structural sense it does rather end up making the book feel rudderless and distracted at times

kikiandarrowsfishshelf's review

4.0

I picked up this book because I wanted to read fiction, and this sounded interesting.

In many ways, it is a very surprising book. I hadn't read anything but Vine (or Rendell) before, but after reading this I have. The funny about this book is that the mystery is easily solved by an attentive reader. Anyone can figure it out before the narrator. I know it sounds strange, but that makes the book better. It allows for the characters to drive the plot and allows for the reader to care more about the narrator. What the reader is left with is a interesting family history combined with the story of a marraige. It's a gripping book.