The traditional appositive for Ruth Rendell is “today’s Agatha Christie” (or something of the sort). She’s never had a mysterious disappearance, but Rendell has been writing mystery novels for more than forty years; she has twenty books in her Inspector Wexford series, starting with her first book, as well as 28 non-series books and sixteen short story collections. She happily goes where Agatha never went, though.

I’ve read all the Wexford books and enjoy them; this year I started reading chronologically through her non-series books. One Across, Two Down is the fourth of these, from 1971, and it packs a punch. Agatha made the murderer the protagonist in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but you didn’t know it; in this book you very much are in the story from the beginning from Stanley Manning’s murderous perspective. Funny thing, though: he doesn’t actually murder anyone until the last page.

While the Wexford books are a serious character series, I feel Rendell takes her stand-alone books into a far grittier place. They explore deeply what what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called “the line dividing good and evil [that] cuts through the heart of every human being” (from The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956). Beyond this, in every character she traces the darkest emotions: stifling panic, crowing sadism, numbing despair. Bewilderment, defeat, pity – all the feelings experienced by those inhabiting the space around murder.

Are these depressing books because of their darkness? I don’t think they are, but I’ve never been afraid of seeing or even experiencing darkness; it’s an important part of reality and to my mind serves paradoxically to illuminate the human condition. The actions of darkness may sometimes be evil and destructive, as with murder; the darkness itself simply is, without judgment. (Remember that the actions of darkness can also be creative and good, like the writings of Virginia Woolf.)

I’m excited to see where else Ruth Rendell goes in her writing; she packs a lot of talent and I’m only up to 1976!