Vanity Dies Hard

by Ruth Rendell

Book Overview

Wealthy Alice Whittaker -- now Alice Fielding -- is known for her generosity, and when her friend Nesta vanishes Alice is determined to find her and help her. If that means money, well, Alice has... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345349520
• ISBN13: 9780345349521
• Release Date: October 1987
• Publisher: Fawcett Books
• Length: 10 Pages
• Weight: 0.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Unusual - possibly not for all tastes

For fans of Rendell who admire her books, the way she turns the genre on its head, this is another brilliant example of Rendell's ingenuity. For new reader who like the conventional boundaries of the genre, this may not be quite so satisfying a book...Suffice to say, it is well-written, engaging, with a set of interesting and well-developed character. Too, here Rendell really her theme (i.e. vanity, what it can lead to, what it can cause, how it expresses itself in people) and runs with it! This is a marvellous exploration of vanity, she probes deeply into each of her characters with this interesting theme in mind.With Vanity Dies Hard, she really confounds expectations. She turns everything we expect, everything we and the charachters assume, on its head, so that we can be sure nothing in the world of Rendell is certain...And it all makes such beautiful sense. This novel of hysteria and vanity is a unique gem from RR

Surprising, not disapointing

This is one of Rendell's more interesting novels, and she seems to be having a lot of fun with the conventions of the genre : in another of her novels she tells us who murdered who, when, where, how and even why in the first paragraph. Here she once again twists the rules of the mystery novel, but in another way of course and any real analysis of that twist of the rules would destroy the fun of the first read, sorry. But I have reread this novel a couple of times, with a great deal of enjoyment at how well she twists expectations and very gently pokes fun at the genre. Great novel.