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A review by april_does_feral_sometimes
Thirteen Steps Down by Ruth Rendell
3.0
I've read a few Rendell novels before and I couldn't put them down. 'Thirteen Steps Down' was like a slow lifting of the curtain until finally there are a mass of actors in view and moving about. No question that the acting is interesting and eventually the many individuals began to differentiate themselves by their activities and their interests. Mix Cellini, in particular, appears dangerous, especially to Gwendolen Chawcer, his landlady, and Nerissa Nash, super model. But it takes awhile for the reader to understand how these three people and their intersections of life, friends and work are going to make something extraordinary occur. When the denouement is at hand, I felt like a cap pistol went off rather than a cannon. However, it is a good thriller which relies heavily on the characters' personalities to create suspense.
Mix, who works as a Fiterama repairman, has an obsession with two people: Nash, who he is stalking, and the life and death of a famous serial killer, Reggie Christie. Mix is fascinated especially with how Christie buried all of his victims under the floorboards and walls of his house. For awhile, Mix is in control of himself. But eventually he is missing client appointments to repair their exercise equipment and the company he works for wants him to come in and talk about the complaints. It's difficult to do his job and follow the beautiful model, too. In order to meet her, he has to find out where she lives and where she goes, so he must spend a lot of hours following her and her friends, trying to finagle relationships with them or somehow create a plausible situation to become her lover. In the meantime, he cannot stop buying books about Reggie and reading over and over how he killed a dozen women. He walks by Reggie's ex-property as often as he can. When he sees that Chawcer is advertising for a renter, he takes it because it's a few blocks away from where all the murders occurred.
Chawcer is an 80-year-old woman who never left home. Her house is a mouldering crumbling small mansion of antiques and dust. She spends her days reading 19th century literature and she has no TV set. Raised as an upper-class Victorian by her authoritarian, but gentle father and her conservative mother, she literally has almost no experience of the world outside of her house. Her dead parents' fortune is dwindling so she takes in a boarder, but she doesn't like Mix and she avoids him - easy since he lives in an apartment on the third floor. She really has no interest in the house and doesn't take care of it, but fortunately she has faithful friends, one of which happens to be Nerissa's mother, who frequently stop by the dirty mansion.
Mix hates them, but he is always polite despite their old woman ways. He is a disorganized loner who lives in his dreams and fantasies, barely able to distinguish them from reality. He presents as a regular 30 year old man, able to handle customers and his job, until he begins dating a woman he believes to be the key to meet Nerissa. Danila works as an exercise teacher at the Shoshana's Spa and Health Club where he followed Nerissa. He thinks the model is a member. Danila is very lonely and has no clue about Mix's hidden motives. But Mix can't stop comparing her to Nerissa, and soon he, angrily, can't see any more use for her after she explains Nerissa is not a regular Club member, but is seeing Madame Shoshana in her Soothsayer role in her room upstairs from the Club.
Nerissa, a normal girl who was suddenly swept into the dizzy world of celebrity because of her beauty, feels she must do the things that are expected of her as a celebrity. She is compliant and dutiful, a nice person. She has a crush on her childhood neighbor, but whenever she visits her happy parents, the now stockbroker avoids her. She is aware she has a stalker, but is too nice to confront him. Then she runs into Mix unexpectedly at Chawcer's house, where her mother needed a ride for a visit to the elderly aristocratic anachronism.
Chawcer is only beginning to be disturbed by the behavior of her boarder, who is wandering around the house when she asked him to stick to his apartment. Chawcer, who has been lost in the Victorian past for decades, is remembering her own past after seeing a death notice of the wife of a doctor she developed a crush on 50 years ago. She starts fantasizing about becoming her ex-doctor's wife, so leaves her house to find an Internet cafe. From her newspaper reading, she knows somehow these computers can find people.
This book is busy with characters and their mental lives, but with these three meeting each other, Chawcer, Mix and Nash, a tragedy is brewing. The fantasies each are nurturing are not possible given how they actually live and are leading them into regrettable decisions. Everyone is going to get hurt if they don't open their eyes to reality. But Mix, when reality begins to crush him, having studied his favorite serial killer for decades, wonders if bodies can really remain undiscovered if hidden in a house. When circumstances give him an opportunity to copy his second most admired role model, he learns too late the books missed a detail.
What is that sickening smell coming from under the floorboards?
Mix, who works as a Fiterama repairman, has an obsession with two people: Nash, who he is stalking, and the life and death of a famous serial killer, Reggie Christie. Mix is fascinated especially with how Christie buried all of his victims under the floorboards and walls of his house. For awhile, Mix is in control of himself. But eventually he is missing client appointments to repair their exercise equipment and the company he works for wants him to come in and talk about the complaints. It's difficult to do his job and follow the beautiful model, too. In order to meet her, he has to find out where she lives and where she goes, so he must spend a lot of hours following her and her friends, trying to finagle relationships with them or somehow create a plausible situation to become her lover. In the meantime, he cannot stop buying books about Reggie and reading over and over how he killed a dozen women. He walks by Reggie's ex-property as often as he can. When he sees that Chawcer is advertising for a renter, he takes it because it's a few blocks away from where all the murders occurred.
Chawcer is an 80-year-old woman who never left home. Her house is a mouldering crumbling small mansion of antiques and dust. She spends her days reading 19th century literature and she has no TV set. Raised as an upper-class Victorian by her authoritarian, but gentle father and her conservative mother, she literally has almost no experience of the world outside of her house. Her dead parents' fortune is dwindling so she takes in a boarder, but she doesn't like Mix and she avoids him - easy since he lives in an apartment on the third floor. She really has no interest in the house and doesn't take care of it, but fortunately she has faithful friends, one of which happens to be Nerissa's mother, who frequently stop by the dirty mansion.
Mix hates them, but he is always polite despite their old woman ways. He is a disorganized loner who lives in his dreams and fantasies, barely able to distinguish them from reality. He presents as a regular 30 year old man, able to handle customers and his job, until he begins dating a woman he believes to be the key to meet Nerissa. Danila works as an exercise teacher at the Shoshana's Spa and Health Club where he followed Nerissa. He thinks the model is a member. Danila is very lonely and has no clue about Mix's hidden motives. But Mix can't stop comparing her to Nerissa, and soon he, angrily, can't see any more use for her after she explains Nerissa is not a regular Club member, but is seeing Madame Shoshana in her Soothsayer role in her room upstairs from the Club.
Nerissa, a normal girl who was suddenly swept into the dizzy world of celebrity because of her beauty, feels she must do the things that are expected of her as a celebrity. She is compliant and dutiful, a nice person. She has a crush on her childhood neighbor, but whenever she visits her happy parents, the now stockbroker avoids her. She is aware she has a stalker, but is too nice to confront him. Then she runs into Mix unexpectedly at Chawcer's house, where her mother needed a ride for a visit to the elderly aristocratic anachronism.
Chawcer is only beginning to be disturbed by the behavior of her boarder, who is wandering around the house when she asked him to stick to his apartment. Chawcer, who has been lost in the Victorian past for decades, is remembering her own past after seeing a death notice of the wife of a doctor she developed a crush on 50 years ago. She starts fantasizing about becoming her ex-doctor's wife, so leaves her house to find an Internet cafe. From her newspaper reading, she knows somehow these computers can find people.
This book is busy with characters and their mental lives, but with these three meeting each other, Chawcer, Mix and Nash, a tragedy is brewing. The fantasies each are nurturing are not possible given how they actually live and are leading them into regrettable decisions. Everyone is going to get hurt if they don't open their eyes to reality. But Mix, when reality begins to crush him, having studied his favorite serial killer for decades, wonders if bodies can really remain undiscovered if hidden in a house. When circumstances give him an opportunity to copy his second most admired role model, he learns too late the books missed a detail.
What is that sickening smell coming from under the floorboards?