![]() Rendell's characters end up where they began, except that the second time around, the true horror of their situations is revealed. ![]() In A Sight for Sore Eyes, Rendell not only conjures up the perfect crime, but she does so by fashioning a plot that's perfectly circular. Houses, for Poe, always stood as representations of the human mind: Following in his Gothic footsteps, Rendell has dedicated her long writing career to leaving no cobwebby cupboard or dank, id-like basement unexplored. A Sight for Sore Eyes is her 42nd book, and, like the best of its direct predecessors, as well as those literary near-relations written under Rendell's pen name Barbara Vine, this novel reads like a house-hunting trip with that Master Realtor of the Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. ![]() Rendell has been disturbing her readers' sleep for more than three decades now. The world just seems like an evil place." What higher praise could a mystery writer wish for? ![]() "After I finish one of her books, I don't sleep well, and I'm out of sorts for days. So, what was the problem? "She gives me the creeps," my colleague explained. ![]() A few minutes earlier, this same woman had complained that her stash of good mysteries was running low, and I had enthusiastically recommended Ruth Rendell's latest, A Sight for Sore Eyes (Crown, $24). "No, no, I don't read Ruth Rendell," said a colleague, backing away as though I'd offered her an arsenic hors d'oeuvre. ![]()
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