A Ruth Rendell Paperback Bonanza

Ruth Rendell was one of the first mystery and crime writers whose new books I could hardly wait to get my hands on every year. Rendell was, of course, the author of the Inspector Wexford series, but she also wrote dozens of standalone crime novels and short stories under her own name or using the pen name Barbara Vine. When Rendell died in May 2015 she even left behind a "just completed" manuscript that was published a few months later as her last novel, Dark Corners. I reviewed that novel in June 2016, but I think that's the last post exclusively dedicated to Ruth Rendell that I ever wrote. And I'm not the only one who seems to have done that because I can't remember the last time I've seen her featured in a book blog or in one of the few remaining newspaper literary supplements still out there.

I've been thinking for a while that I want to go back and re-read a few of the Ruth Rendell novels I purchased over the years. I have almost twenty Rendell/Vine hardcovers on my shelves, but I remembered also buying dozens of her novels in paperback - and the paperbacks were nowhere to be found. Then, just when I grew convinced that they had all been lost somewhere during all the packing, moving, and storing of books that I did in the nineties, I found them in a small, mislabeled box that had been put away in the depths of a closet for the better part of twenty years.

As you can see from the picture, there were about 35 Ruth Rendell or Barbara Vince novels in the box, including both her first standalone and the first Inspector Wexford novel. So now I have over 40 novels to choose from along with just about every short story she ever published. These days, I'm feeling an urge to go back and read the crime fiction pioneers and masters. Ruth Rendell was not one of the pioneers, but no one deserves to be called a master of the genre more than she does. I can't wait to enjoy the books again.

Books Found in a Dark Closet

Joyce Porter

Sometime in the early nineties, already a fan of detective fiction series but only following one or two of them at the time, I was in a local bookstore (probably Houston's Murder by the Book) looking for something new. That’s when I stumbled on a nice little set of books written by a new-to-me author by the name of Joyce Porter. I’m always attracted to a set of books that share so similar a physical style that they really look good on the shelf, and the ten Porter books I found that day really did look good together. I did notice that the first book in the series had originally been published in 1964 and the last in 1980, but I didn’t much wonder why they had all been reprinted together in this particular set between 1989 and  1991. What struck me was the high probability that they would be good mysteries if a publisher as small as Foul Play Press, out of Woodstock, Vermont, had taken the risk to reprint them as a set (a book of related short stories was not published until 1995, and I don’t have a copy). I learned just today that Porter had just died in December 1990.

The 11 Dover Books, Less the Short Story Collection

When I brought Dover One to the cash register, I was surprised at the enthusiasm the bookseller showed when he noticed what I was purchasing. I remember him telling me that he was a Joyce Porter fan, but that’s about all I really remember other than his tone. Now, five or six dollars’ worth of disposable income was a lot of money to me in the early nineties, so his comments made me feel better that I wasn’t wasting my precious book “allowance” on something that would ultimately disappoint me. Turns out, that the bookseller was right, and over the span of a few months, I returned and purchased the other nine Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover books one by one.

I read all ten of these in less than a year, and that was almost thirty years now, so I don’t remember much about them anymore. Nor have I ever seen Joyce Porter’s name or the Dover books come up on any of the book blogs I’ve been reading for the last thirteen years or so. Surely, she can’t be that well-kept a secret.

According to Wikipedia, Porter served in the Women’s Royal Air Force between 1949 and 1963, retiring so that she could be a fulltime writer. She is also the author, I see, of two other series (Eddie Brown, The World’s Most Reluctant Spy and the Constance Ethel Morrison Burke books), and that the BBC Radio did adaptations of five of her Dover books. So, she must have been at least fairly well known, at least in Britain, at one time.

The Dover books are all rather lighthearted takes on the mystery genre in which Detective Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover solves crimes almost despite his laziness and general incompetence. His sidekick, Sergeant MacGregor was Dover’s opposite. And that’s a good thing, because Dover’s obesity slows him down a bit and he has even been described as “the only man in the Metropolitan Police Service with underarm dandruff.” All of that said, don’t be too put off by the comedic aspect of the books, because Porter, from the little I can still remember about her plots, wrote fairly complicated mysteries – even though in my mind I always pictured Inspector Dover as an Oliver Hardy clone. (Apparently, so did this publisher, as can be seen from the covers of several of the books.)

Oliver Hardy

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