One hot, idyllic summer in 1976 five young people come together at a grand country estate. Murder will take place. Lives will be changed irrevocably, the repercussions felt distinctly many years later.
There's a reason that Barbara Vine (aka Ruth Rendell) is known as 'the Queen of Crime', and that she's won award after award, and that she happens to be one of my very favorite mystery authors. Vine's writing is always excellent, her plotting pitch perfect, and her characters fully developed and entirely believable. In A Fatal Inversion the reader knows from the first chapter that something terrible has happened. And early on we know who committed the crime. What we're unsure of is the motivation for the crime and who exactly the victim is. All along I thought I had a good idea who was in that grave, but it took me until the last chapters to be sure, and then I got it wrong. Barbara Vine knows how to string along her reader until the last horrific moment.
A Fatal Inversion is a complex story moving forwards and backwards in time and told from multiple viewpoints. When the current owners of Wyvis Hall decide to bury their dog in the estate's pet cemetery, they dig up the bones of a woman and a baby. Ten years previously Adam Verne-Smith inherited his great-uncle's estate, to the dismay of his father who had spent years sucking up to his uncle fully expecting that upon his death he would be the new owner. He's shocked when the estate passes to his son who cares naught for it or its contents. This creates animosity between the two that will never completely disappear. Later Adam will wish his father had been the one to bear the burden of Wyvis Hall.
Accompanied by his friend Rufus, Adam sets off to check out the estate, which he's prepared to sell in order to finance a trip to Greece. A day visit turns into a week and a week into a month. Adam and Rufus spend languid days boozing and sunning themselves. It had been a particularly hot and sunny summer, so why bother traveling to Greece. Adam gets the idea that they'll turn Wyvis Hall, or Ecalpemos as they rechristen it, into a sort of commune with everyone paying their way. Instead it's more a mixture of hangers-on and idealistic youths who sell the furnishings piece by piece to keep them in food and drink and the occasional trip to the local pub. It's a strange combination of friends and acquaintances who will end up clashing as events will bear out.
This is not a fly by the seat of your pants murder mystery. Vine very slowly spins a web of murder and deceit. It's the psychological motivations of the characters that's important here. The story starts out slowly and builds to a crescendo of murder and mayhem. The first couple of times I picked this up to read I couldn't get into the story. But if you are prepared to take your time and let the story slowly reveal itself you'll be richly rewarded in the end.
This definitely ranks at the top of my favorites of Barbara Vine's books. Reading it makes me want to go on a binge of her work to fill in the gaps of the novels I've missed. So I've already started looking for the books I don't own (not the Inspector Wexford mysteries, but the novels). I've read just about every book she's written under the name Barbara Vine, but there are still lots to find and read that she's written under her real name. As a matter of fact I just recently started reading A Judgement in Stone, which so far looks to be another classic. It has all the elements that make her so thoroughly readable. I'll get back to my other mysteries soon enough, until then I plan on enjoying a bit more of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine's genius.