Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
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Hot young thing Amber Marshalson's doting father finds her bludgeoned to death, just steps away from the home she shares with him, his second wife and the toddler son to whom party-girl Amber gave birth while still in school. A friend of hers is found dead weeks later.
Competent, committed Chief Inspector Wexford doggedly investigates the two deaths and finds himself drawn into the shady underworld of illegal surrogacy and fake pregnancy.
He meets an interior decorator who's not all that he seems, with a disturbed woman-hating brother in tow. Meanwhile, Wexford's colleague Hannah has a fling with a wary co-worker, and Wexford's daughter decides to bear a child for her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend.
Confused yet?
But wait, there's more. Much more. When in fact, there should be less.
Many of Rendell's extraneous plot points are tangential to, and distracting from, the meat of the story and its focus on the deaths of two willfully selfish girls barely out of school.
Perhaps she's seeking to give her fairly by-the-numbers crime novel more spiritual and moral heft, and imbue it with deeper meaning. Maybe that's why Rendell's multi-layered mystery tries to go beyond mere bloodshed to explore the ethics behind wombs-for-hire and the desperate desire women feel to hear the pitter-patter of little feet.
Yet the story feels forced and painfully unnatural. A never-pregnant spinster so deluded and eager for a child that she brings home an African baby that she believes she gave birth to herself? We were born yesterday?
Rendell's many plotlines detract from a juicy mystery that could have carried the book on its own. Why did Amber die? Chances are, you'll never figure it out. And by the time this plodder of a whodunit ends, you won't care.
End in Tears
By Ruth Rendell
Crown, 336 pp., $25
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