The Girl Next Door

A Novel

By: Ruth Rendell

Narrated by: Ric Jerrom

INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL’S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS

From crime legend Ruth Rendell, a psychologically intriguing novel about an old murder that sends shockwaves across a group of astonishingly carnal and appetiteful elderly friends: “Refined, probing, and intelligent…never less than a pleasure” (USA TODAY).

In the waning months of the second World War, a group of children discover a tunnel in their neighborhood outside London. For that summer of 1944, the subterranean space becomes their “secret garden,” where the friends play games, tell their fortunes, and perform for each other.

Six decades later, construction workers make a grisly discovery beneath a house on the same land: a tin box containing two skeletal hands, one male and one female. As the hands make national news, the friends come together once again, to recall their long ago days for a detective. Then the police investigation sputters, and the threads holding their friendship together begin to unravel. Is the truth buried amid the tangled relationships of these aging men and women and their memories? Will it emerge before it’s too late?

Stephen King says, “no one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability, and malignant coincidence.” In The Girl Next Door—“yet another gem” (The Washington Post)—Rendell brilliantly shows that the choices people make, and the emotions behind them, remain as potent in late life as they were in youth. “Rendell’s wit, always mordant, has never been sharper than when she skewers patronizing assumptions about the elderly” (Chicago Tribune).

Oddly good

Not really much of a mystery in her usual way but actually pretty compelling story of an elderly group of friends. Loved the development of Rosemary.

ANOTHER EXCELLENT RENDELL NOVEL

It's a love story, it's a mystery with a twist, it's good. Rendell always gives the annoying people a good kick, I like that.

If you're a fan, don't miss this one.

Not the same as printed edition

I enjoyed this performance but I did notice a few ‘errors’: missing phrases or inserted sentences. If you’re a Rendell purist you may want to stick to the printed edition and perhaps try to read a copy from the original publisher.

Kept unfolding more twists and turns

This was one of the best Ruth Rendell mysteries I have read (of many). Somehow, even though you know both the crime and the culprit from the first chapter, the unveiling of the lives of all the senior citizens affected dozens of years after the event is absorbing. While things are tied up more or less neatly at the end, you will not find what you thought will happen has happened. Rendell gets the reader into the psyche of several characters who met as children during WWII, and how life has warped or injured them, and how they have survived when they all re-meet much later in life. While you don't necessarily like the characters, Rendell has made you care about what they will do. Really enjoyed this long book, and as ever, the map of London in front of you always helps with Rendell's excellent evocation of scenery.

Interesting characters and good listen

Would you listen to The Girl Next Door again? Why?

Thought the overall story was interesting and the character development paid off towards the end of the book.

Great until the ending(s)

Never before have I known a Ruth Rendell or Barbara Vine story to be anything less than brilliant, and this one measures up to that standard almost all the way through, but then everything sort of went kaput. Up until the last chapters, this is a typically superb Rendell novel: both good and evil characters are complex and fascinating, the plot twists left me gasping from Chapter 1 throughout, and I listened to the whole thing in one sitting because I just had to know what happened next. Then, in the final chapters when the suspense was really killing me, the characters began to act and feel in ways that just were not consistent with the personalities that Rendell drew so beautifully up until that point. Rendell has that rarest of gifts, the ability to create a unique and intricate plot which arises entirely from character and setting, but that didn't happen here. I don't know whether Rendell suffered a failure of imagination or l completely misunderstood her, but the endings of each character's story were just meaningless to me. It was like baking a cake only to discover too late that you've confused the salt with the sugar. I have been a devoted Rendell/Vine reader for decades, have read over two dozen of her novels and fully intend to listen to another Rendell audiobook in order to heal from this one ... but what a disappointment!

...what?

Any additional comments?

The narration was wonderful, but the plot didn't make any sense. The whole book felt like those first few chapters when you're waiting for the story to get started. I kept thinking I must only be a few chapters in, and then suddenly it ended. What was the plot? I really don't understand. Maybe it doesn't lend itself to audio, but I have no idea what I just listened to or why.

There is no mystery

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Someone who is interested in character development, but not mystery

Would you ever listen to anything by Ruth Rendell again?

Yes; I usually enjoy her writing.

What does Ric Jerrom bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I would have preferred to read it.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment. There are no twists and turns. No particular plot points that her further character development contributes to the mystery.

Any additional comments?

I really disliked this book. I'm sorry I wasted the time and the credit on it

Anticlimactic, disappointing

This book promised to be exciting, it started ok, but then went absolutely nowhere. I wish I could have my credit and time back. Its only saving grace was decent narration.

Almost, but not quite

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

The book is intended as a suspense work, so readers who like suspense may enjoy it.

What was most disappointing about Ruth Rendell’s story?

So much tension was built up, but the ending was anti-climatic.

What about Ric Jerrom’s performance did you like?

Solid read

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment.

Any additional comments?

I first saw this book on the shelves of a store in Australia. I read the book jacket, and it promised to be engaging. Right from the start of the work, the reader knows who is killed, who did it, and why. But, it's not until sixty years later that the bodies are discovered and the crime investigated. That worked. What did not work was 70 something year sleuths and their crimes of passion that bordered on the ridiculous.