Finished!!

I've just read it! I finished today, and although I did definitely enjoy it, I was a little dissapointed wit the ending.!

Ruth Rendell is a master of the crime fiction genre, and as I'd enjoyed some of her television outings in the form of Detective Wexford, I thought I'd give her latest a go!

It actually turned out to be a lot darker than the Wexford Mysteries, but the way she got inside the mind of a sociopath was superb. I got a bit creeped out when I was reading it, so she obviously did her job of character development well!

This novel is more from the point of view of the criminal, and his thoughts, and the police aren't mentioned much at all, until the obvious point! She very cleverly built up the main characters, and halfway through I wondered if I was reading a horror or a crime novel, because of the dark nature of one of the character's mind's!

It was quite clever, and there was alot of internal thought dialogue of the characters, so you had an idea how their emotions and psychological state was changing throughout. This enabled you to enter into the strange twisted logic of a killer, and this book was much more psychological then her others in it's tone.

I was a little dissapointed by some of the sub plots though. One character turned out to be not much use, and I was a bit annoyed she hadn't given him more to do in the story. I felt the ending was a bit anti-climatic, even though there were some clever gems.

Overall, I think it was a good read, and I'd recommend it, but only if you're prepared to read for a while before you get into the plot. It does start quite slowly, whether this is because she wanted to build up the characters more, I don't know. That would be my only criticism.

On to the next book now...