A New Lease of Death
The second Wexford novel published by John Long in 1967
The map showed the whole of this rather sleepy country district. Kingsmarkham, a market town of some twelve thousand inhabitants, lay in the centre, its streets coloured in brown and white, its pastoral environs green with the blotches of dark veridian that denoted woodland. Roads ran from it as from the meshy heart of a spider’s web, one leading to Pomfret in the South, another to Sewingbury in the Northeast. The scattered villages, Flagford, Clusterwell and Forby, were tiny flies on this web …
It’s impossible to forget the violent bludgeoning to death of an elderly lady in her home. Even more so when it’s your first murder case.
Wexford believed he’d solved Mrs Primero’s murder fifteen years ago. It was no real mystery. Everyone knew Painter, her odd-job man, had done it. There had never been any doubt in anyone’s mind. Until now.
Notes
Britain’s last executions: the 50th anniversary of the deaths of thieves Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen marks a historic moment.
Ruth Rendell talks about the development of Wexford and Burden as characters.
Published in the US under the title Sins of the Fathers.
First Adapted for TV in 1991.
Contemporary Reads 1
P.D. James - Unnatural Causes
Agatha Christie - Endless Night
Ira Levin - Rosemary’s Baby
Doris Lessing - On Cats
Joan Lindsay - Picnic At Hanging Rock
Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö - The Man on the Balcony
Footnotes
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