A Guilty Thing Surprised

 A Guilty Thing Surprised (1970) by Ruth Rendell

Elizabeth Nightingale is the beautiful, young-looking, 40-ish wife of Quentin Nightingale. She has everything she could want--a lovely home at Myfleet Manor in the English countryside and a husband who denies her nothing. She is well-liked and likes everyone. Well...except her brother. When Elizabeth is found beaten over head after one of her evening walks in the woods, Chief Inspector Wexford and Inspector Burden must try to find a motive for the apparently senseless killing. 

As they dig, they discover that while life at Myfleet Manor may have been quiet, all was not well between husband and wife. There had been a certain cooling between them. Was it possible that Elizabeth was meeting a lover that night? And did Quentin follow her and, in a fit of jealous rage, kill her? Or perhaps young Sean, the gardener whom she had remembered in her will, got anxious for the money she was going to leave him? It's also possible that whatever enmity there was between Elizabeth and her brother Denys Villiers exploded into murder. But the deeper Wexford and Burden go, the more complex the motives seem to get...especially when blackmail raises its ugly head.

I read most of Rendell's books through the early 1990s and enjoyed them all. But rereading them now, I'm struck by how many uncomfortable subjects creep into her mysteries. A Guilty Things Surprised is a case in point. I can't tell you what the uncomfortable subject is--but suffice it is to say that I had forgotten all about it and was completely taken off-guard by it again reading the book 30 years later. There are plenty of clues (especially if you have literary leanings) and Rendell handles the material well. But I still didn't see it coming. 

I enjoyed the relationship between Wexford and Burden. Poor Mike Burden with his Puritan ways just can't seem to understand these people the way Wexford does. But Burden does get the chance to be proven right in some of his interpretations of the crime. It was good to see him shine a bit. A thoroughly interesting and good mystery. ★★★ and 1/2

First line: When Quentin Nightingale left home for London each morning his wife was always still asleep

Last line: I want to die.
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Deaths = 4 (one hit on the head; one natural; two bombed)