This year I’ve been doing the author ABC challenge at the 4-Mystery Addicts reading group. The goal os to read authors with last names from A to Z and it goes for a year, Now, in Novemeber, I found I was only missing letters N and V so after a bit of checking, I decided to go with A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine (aka Ruth Rendell).  I’ve never read Vine, the name Ruth Rendell used for several years. Both nameswon awards including an Edgar for this old, sometimes called classic, novel.  

A Fatal Inversion 
by Barbara Vine
07-01-87
Read by William Gaminara: 2020 – 
10 hrs and 13 mins
Rating: B+  / mystery 

And I’m glad I chose this because it was a whole lot better than I expected. And I read somewhere later that it’s a kind of classic of the type and era – like PD James and Scott Turow. and I can see that. The novels are slower moving but quite suspenseful thanks to intelligent writing and nicely developed characters.

Anyway, I was listening and had to go back over parts I wasn’t sure of – sometimes whole chapters but a print version was never necessary.  It starts out simple enough, but gets complicated as a not terribly sensible girl shows up at the home of a young man who has just inherited a small estate and is getting ready to go to university. And then more characters are added plus the Adam and his buddy who brought the girl end up hosting a kind of spontaneous commune of sorts. Meanwhile, Adam’s father is quite upset with him because the grandfather left the estate to Adam..

The deeper complication is that the main line of the plot unfolds a decade later when the bodies of a young woman and a baby are dug up in what was a private pet cemetery at the estate. Who were these corpses and who was responsible? Adam and company don’e actually remember a whole lot from those days and they have a lot to lose.