Ruth Rendell: The Babes in the Wood

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Don't you like a new Wexford for Christmas? He's so, well, glum. But so, well, sensitive. In Kingsmarkham, it's raining so hard that the valley is flooding. Down at the bottom of Chief Inspector Wexford's garden, the waters are lapping the mulberry tree. Wexford is thinking that "you didn't need to much imagination to fancy the whole country sinking and vanishing under this vast superfluity of water.

Everyone overcome by it like shipwrecked men, their raft inadequate, their strength gone, the young and old alike, the strong and the weak." Wexford is, as always, swamped by the demands of life: family, staff, murderers.

The sub-plot is a couple of missing kids, presumed drowned but only by their mother. Mostly this one's set once more inside Wexford's head. And Rendell, after a disappointing couple of outings, is back on form as the queen of the interior, of the quiet disquiet that lives within.

Hutchinson

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