The Monster in the Box

Oh, Ruthie, why did you do this to me?

Normally, I enjoy a good Wexford novel, and normally I enjoy Ruth Rendell, but Madame Rendell's latest effort, The Monster in the Box, has left me unsatisfied and annoyed.

Set in Wexford's usual stomping grounds of Kinsgmarkham, the novel starts out with Wexford having a very chance sighting of a figure who has been haunting him since Wexford's career started. Wexford first met Eric Targo when he first started out on the force, and questioned the man in relation to Wexford's very first murder investigation. Immediately, Wexford instinctively knew something very sinister about Targo, but lacking evidence and proof, his hands were tied when it came to acting on his instinct. But in the present, decades later, Wexford finally gets the lead he needs, yet Targo still manages to elude him. Add in a lion on the loose, some tense race relations, and Rendell's typically well-drawn, quirky characters and you think you might have a great Wexford mystery on your hands right?

Um, no.

The first half of this novel involves Wexford telling in great, painful detail his story about Eric Targo and their long history, to his second-in-command, Mike Burden. Intermingled with these lengthy periods of exposition are Wexford's own memories of his personal life. It's a double-edged walk down memory lane and all of it is told in either flashbacks or in long story-telling sessions in pubs over drinks with Burden.

And then, intermingled with all this expository stuff, is a seemingly unrelated subplot involving a local Muslim family and one of Wexford's detectives meddling where she doesn't belong on a matter that isn't even one of police interest.

This novel doesn't even get remotely interesting until over halfway through it. The only reason I kept reading is because I had faith that Rendell wouldn't let me down in the end, mistress of the genre that she is.

But even the missing lion and the melodramatic secondary characters couldn't save this story from becoming a massive fail I felt it was. With an unsatisfying ending and a slightly far-fetched resolution to one of the story-lines, I couldn't help but put this down feeling disappointed.

Oh well. This is the first time Ruth has let me down. I just hope it is onwards and upwards from here!