An Unkindness of Ravens
The thirteenth Wexford novel published by Hutchinson in 1985
I had a go at dotty militant feminism. I have sympathy and support for feminism. If you’re a woman, you must be a feminist. But at the time there were women who didn’t want anything to do with men. They wanted them to die out and to use sperm banks. I was described by one women’s magazine as the greatest anti-feminist since Dashiell Hammett.
Rodney Williams’s disappearance seems typical to Wexford - a simple case of a man running off with a woman other than his wife. But when another woman reports that her husband is missing, the case turns unpleasantly complex.
Notes
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Wexford searches Smith’s Classical Dictionary and discovers that ARRIA was named after Arria, the wife of Aulus Caecina Paetus, a Roman senator who conspired against the emperor Claudius.
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Shortlisted for best novel at the Edgars.
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Adapted for TV in 1990.
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Jake Kerridge discusses the best of Ruth Rendell to read, watch and listen to.
Contemporary Reads 2
- Jeannette Winterson - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
- Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid’s Tale
- Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor
- Sara Paretsky - Killing Orders
- Patrick Süskind - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer