Ruth Rendell, Some Lie and Some Die
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It’s hard to decide what’s more fun in Some Lie and Some Die, Ruth Rendell’s 1973 tale of murder at a British rock festival: Inspector Reginald Wexford’s overwrought suspicion of hippies, or the strangely charismatic flower child singer Zeno’s power over his fellow counterculture-ites. When the body of a brutally murdered young woman turns up on the outskirts of the festival site, a generational clash ensues. Who is to blame for this crime? The scary hippies, or the squares whose carefully trimmed shrubbery hides all sorts of nasty secrets? Wexford is the quintessential British country detective: irascible, fond of a pint with lunch, gardening, and his wife’s shepherd’s pie. There have been 23 Wexford novels so far, and Rendell shows no sign of slowing down.
