Road Rage

<img src="https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1380231169ra/681275.gif" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br>Read by.................. Nigel Anthony<br>Total Runtime......... 11 Hours 23 Mins<br><br>Description: <i>The woods outside of Kingsmarkham were lovely, dark, and deep. And they were about to vanish forever when the new highway cut through them. While Chief Inspector Wexford privately despaired about the loss of his hiking grounds, local residents and outsiders were organizing a massive protest. Some of them were desperate enough to kidnap five hostages and threaten to kill them. One hostage was Wexford's wife, Dora. Now, combining high technology with his extraordinary detecting skills, Wexford and his team race to find the kidnappers' whereabouts. Because someone has crossed from political belief to fanaticism, and as the first body is found, good intentions may become Wexford's personal path to hell.</i><br><br><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1442412978i/16231444._SX540_.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br><img src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403175107s/918926.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> Here we have environmental activists living in trees to stop a bypass being built, a dodgy cab company, a winnebago, and a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qq2AV7Wx5w" rel="nofollow noopener">string of pearls.</a><br><br>3* From Doon With Death (Inspector Wexford, #1)<br>3* A New Lease of Death (Inspector Wexford, #2)<br>3* Wolf to the Slaughter (Inspector Wexford, #3)<br>2* The Best Man to Die (Inspector Wexford, #4)<br>3* A Guilty Thing Suprised #5<br>3* No More Dying Then (Inspector Wexford, #6)<br>3* Murder Being Once Done (Inspector Wexford, #7)<br>3* Some Lie and Some Die (Inspector Wexford, #8)<br>3* Shake Hands Forever (Inspector Wexford, #9)<br>3* A Sleeping Life (Inspector Wexford, #10)<br>3* Put on by Cunning (Inspector Wexford #11)<br>1* Speaker of Mandarin (Inspector Wexford, #12)<br>3* An Unkindness of Ravens (Inspector Wexford, #13)<br>3* The Veiled One (Inspector Wexford, #14)<br>3* Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (Inspector Wexford, #15)<br>3* Road Rage (Inspector Wexford, #17) <br><br><br>3* Not in the Flesh (Inspector Wexford, #21)<br>2* The Vault (Inspector Wexford, #23)

I was pleasantly surprised with this book. This one must be the first one I liked. Usually, I find Ruth Rendell just bores me to death. This is especially true of the Wexford series. The same boring elements were there in <i>Road Rage</i> too but they were downplayed and some interesting themes were opened up, so I rather enjoyed the mystery. Nevertheless, this is not something I would reread as I generally do with great mysteries. <br /><br />A body is found in the woods and the police have started enquiries. It was a young German woman called Ulrike Ranke who was on her way to meet a friend. But at the same time, a bypass being built in the vicinity is attracting loads of required protests and unwanted vandalism. When Wexford's wife, Dora is kidnapped along with a bunch of others, the story forgets poor Ulrike and we begin to follow the hunt for Dora and the other people.<br /><br />I was very interested in the ecological theme and especially the nature lecture Rendell gave through the book. The protesters were depicted as practically being hippies with odd clothes and strange way of life. I thought this theme would eventually tie up with the murder of Ulrike. Instead, that just lay there untouched until suddenly it gets solved. The kidnapping got all the footage instead. Though the theme was interesting, I would not have chosen to read about a high-profile kidnapping when I wanted to read a murder mystery! I felt cheated.<br /><br />One of the reasons this book is probably better is because very little time is spent on Wexford's dull personal life. The antics of his boring family is also cut down. Instead, with Dora kidnapped, she takes centre stage in the story, but in a more contributing manner. So that was a positive. I was not very pleased with the solution, though. It was just so random and unrealistic! But with such a theme, it was probably the most possible solution unless you really wanted to explore political ramifications. And THAT would just about have killed the book.<br /><br />Frankly, I just feel these mysteries go on and on and explore this theme and that theme when all they have to do is solve a murder, provide criminal insight, and allow us to enjoy a crime. I don't really want to think about environment and its destruction when reading a mystery. This is perhaps why I prefer Agatha Christie over most of these more modern mystery authors. There is no charm to these stories.<br /><br />Despite all my moaning, this was a pretty readable mystery if you don't mind the endless waffling over family and social issues and far too much attention to what Wexford is feeling.

Road Rage (1997) by Ruth Rendell focuses on the unrest that takes over the Kingsmarkham area when a beautiful valley is destined to be broken up to make way for a new highway. Environmentalist groups of all sorts descend on Kingsmarkham for protests and some of the groups set up camps in the wooded area and even construct tree houses to live in. In the midst of all this, the body of a young German woman who had gone missing some time ago is discovered in the brambles destined for the bulldozer. She had been raped and strangled and Inspector Mike Burden is convinced that one of the drivers for Contemporary Cars, a new taxi service, is the culprit, but he and Chief Inspector Wexford are unable to find enough evidence to make a charge stick. <br />Later that summer, Contemporary Cars is again in the police eye when a group calling themselves the "Sacred Globe" take over the taxi service for a few hours and take five prospective passengers as hostages. Their demands are simple--give them plenty of publicity and stop the construction of the highway. A hostage situation is bad enough, but it's made worse for Wexford because one of the hostages is his wife Dora. Wexford and his team are in a race against time to find out where the hostages are kept before the Sacred Globe makes good on their promise to kill the hostages one by one if their demands are not met.<br /><br />When the group finally lets Dora go, Wexford's team gets a great deal of information. Since Dora is the wife of a policeman, she was well aware of the type of details she needed to pay attention to. Even though she was prevented from seeing where she was being taken, she tried to glean every bit of detail she could and was able to give a limited description of her captors even though they were hooded. To enhance her memories, she agrees to hypnosis which brings out a few more details about her surroundings. There are also clues found on her clothes and the police have many leads to follow up. But just how clever are the kidnappers? Have they managed to lay a few false trails and, if so, will Wexford's team be able to sift through the red herrings to find true answer?<br /><br />This is one of the more suspenseful of the Wexford novels. Generally, Rendell's suspense novels are stand-alones, with the Wexford novels following more standard police procedural lines. Of course, a great deal of the suspense is conveyed to the reader through Wexford and his doubled concern for the hostages with his wife being among their number. It has been quite some time since read Rendell on a regular basis, but it's my sense that this one the better novels in her later works. It's a good solid mystery with some clever plotting and it gives a good look at the environmentalist groups and protests of the late 1980s and 1990s. ★★★ and 1/2. [rounded up here]<br /><br />First posted on my blog <a href="https://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/2021/07/road-rage.html" rel="nofollow noopener">My Reader's Block</a>.

3 Stars. Enjoyable but not exciting. My first Ruth Rendell; if I had a choice of one author on a long flight, I'd look elsewhere. Yet I want to come back - my experience is that earlier volumes in a series are often better. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford plods and shuffles. Not intentionally, it just feels that way. Things seem to happen to him, not because of him. And then he turns on a dime. You'll catch it. He loves the beautiful natural area near Kingsmarkham; unfortunately a new bypass is going to cut right through the valley and woods. Of course the environmental protesters arrive - all the groups, Kabal, Species and Sacred Globe. We meet some of the characters, Gary, Quilla, and Conrad Tarling, their King. Even Wexford's wife Dora marches against the bypass. Just at this point, the body of a teenage girl from Germany is found in one of the fields, but that's soon to be overshadowed by the kidnapping of five locals booking a cab! One of them is Dora; could that be accidental? The ransom? Stop the bypass, save the environment. Now you have the picture. Nearer the end I could feel the resolution - that's not good. (May 2020)

This one took me longer than usual to read. I am an Inspector Wexford series fan.<br /><br />Fat book for a mystery, and especially for a Ruth Rendell mystery. Most of her Wexford books are fairly slim; this was one around 350+ pages. And the title can be misleading. This is NOT a case of two people arguing, fighting or shooting each other because one bumped the other's car fender. This book, written in 1997, is about the 'rage' over a new highway being built through a particularly picturesque and pristine English countryside. This rage is generated by various environmental and other social groups which are protesting this new road.<br /><br />The story itself - several people are kidnapped, held hostage and threatened with death unless the government cancels the road project. One of those hostages is Inspector Wexford's wife, Dora.<br /><br />The reason it got five stars from me? The sheer delight of reading the book. The amount and variety of characters which Rendell can cook up - so many of them just awful, miserable, police-baiting, anti-social people - are amazing. I loved it. Every time Wexford or one of his staff, esp. Mike Burden, goes to interview someone it's a good chance that someone is going to be rude and disrespectful, close-mouthed and angry about something or anything, and an altogether colorful creation. (There were two notable exceptions; a married couple who love food and anything to do with it. They were rather pleasant.)<br /><br />There are clues galore, red herrings of course, and for once - yes once! - I figured it out about halfway through. I knew who the 'culprits' were and why. This did not diminish the enjoyment I got from reading this robust and solid mystery. The descriptions of the English countryside, and the various reactions characters had to its inevitable destruction, were also very well done.<br /><br />Five stars.

Disappointing because I’ve liked Rendell in the past. Too much jumping around without clarity of how much time has passed or which character is now the subject of the paragraph. Also, moon phasing completely out of whack in the passage of time.

This book was one of many being passed around the homeless community around Bath, England years ago when I was one of the community. It centers on motorway protests. I met many in the UK who participated in these protests (including a prim old lady sipping tea and smiling, talking about her arrest.) The descriptions or protests and protesters seemed accurate. <br><br>How good was it? The book helped to distract me from being homeless. Here is a cover picture for you:<br><br><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1460859368i/18797198.jpg" width="200" height="200" alt="description" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br>That being said, this is typical Ruth Rendell in that it is a very grim, deeply detailed police procedural. This was the first Inspector Wexford book I'd read. I'm still not entirely sure that I like the character. He's not enigmatic like Sherlock Holmes or righteously cute like Brother Cadfael. Although this was a gripping read for me, it'll be a while before I can tackle another Inspector Wexford book because of the emotional roller-coaster they can put me through.

I'm a huge fan of Ruth Rendell, especially her Barbara Vine titles, but this one was not one of her best. But it was entertaining and I finished it.

This was an okay read but I have been quite disappointed by Rendell lately. I hadn't read any of her books in a long time and although I still enjoy her writing style, her plots always take ages to develop. Road rage is very very slow paced. I almost gave up reading but kept on going as the action picked up about halfway through the book. Still, the plot wasn't very interesting and none of the characters proved quite likeable. A disappointing read.

I usually really like Ruth Rendell but this was so dull I couldn't get through it.