The Monster in the Box - Ruth Rendell

The Monster in the Box (2009) is the twenty-second book in Ruth Rendell’s twenty-four-book Inspector Wexford series. The Wexford books were published  over an almost-fifty-year period (1964-2013), so there is a noticeable shift in style and character development in the Wexford books as they progress over the years. The earlier books have a bit of an old-fashioned feel to them today, and Wexford and his cohorts do not always feel particularly real. This is particularly noticeable to me, I suppose, because I have just read the fourth Wexford novel, The Best Man to Die (1969), and The Monster in the Box almost back-to-back. 

As it turns out, The Monster in the Box is my favorite of the fifteen Wexford novels I have read so far. Not only does the plot involve two intriguing mysteries that need solving, one of the mysteries (because it involves a man Wexford has believed to be a murderer for decades) allows Rendell to show what kind of young policeman, and man, Wexford had been at the very beginning of his career. Much of the book involves Wexford contrasting, mainly to himself, all the cultural changes that he’s observed during his long career without, I think, realizing just how much he himself has changed over the years. And that limited self-awareness on Wexford’s part will serve as the perfect set-up for the little surprise that Rendell throws into the end of this one.

It was while investigating his very first murder case that Wexford first encountered the muscular little man wearing a scarf and walking his dog along the street outside the victim’s home. The man seemed intent on sending Wexford a message by staring so unflinchingly directly into Wexford’s eyes before he continued his walk past the home. When Wexford began running into the man so often, sometimes near the scenes of other murders, he began to feel that this Eric Targo was toying with him, almost daring him to prove Targo’s guilt if he could. And then the man disappeared.

Now, after all these years, Wexford spots Targo on the streets again, and even though he has never mentioned his suspicions to anyone before, he decides now to share his fears with his old partner, Mike Burden - who listens patiently, but just isn’t buying Wexford’s theory much at all. About the same time, Burden’s wife starts to worry that a local Pakistani family may be in the process of arranging the forced marriage of — if not even the honor killing — of Tamima, their teenaged daughter who has been seeing a boy they do not approve of. In what begins as simply a favor to his partner’s wife, Wexford assigns someone to look into what is happening in the Rahman family, but when it turns out that no one in Tamima’s extended family can account for the girl’s current whereabouts, the police start wondering if they are searching for a corpse instead of a girl who may have been forced into an unwanted marriage.

Bottom Line: The Monster in the Box ticks all the right boxes. Longtime fans of the Wexford novels are certain to enjoy such an extended look at Wexford’s early years as he reminisces about his first girlfriends and what he learned from those relationships. The two mysteries are interesting, and they come complete with all the twists and turns that mystery readers enjoy so much. Then, when the two plots begin more and more to intertwine (as they almost always do in mysteries), the climax that follows is a completely satisfying one — especially with that little surprise Rendell tosses her readers at the very end. Too, watching the Kingsmarkham police tiptoe around the Rahmans, a Muslim family, in an attempt not to offend them even while suspecting them of a possible murder, is a reminder of how difficult it is to walk the fine line of political correctness these days — and this novel was written a dozen years ago. In the end, the Rahman family was more offended by all the tiptoeing around than anything else.

Ruth Rendell