THE GIRL NEXT DOOR - RUTH RENDELL

 

Ruth Rendell was eighty-four when she wrote this in 2014 just before she died in 2015. It reads like it was written by an eighty-four year old who really wished she was living in earlier times when things were better and life was grand apart from random murders. Her constant references to earlier times (this one is set initially during the early years of WWII) are a distraction and ultimately just filler. I came away with the feeling that I'd wasted three hours of my life I wasn't going to get back. She needed an editor to take a firm hand on this one. A social novel more than a murder novel.