Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's From Doon with Death

Within the span of only a few hours I happened to finish reading three different (very different) books last night and this morning.  I'll discuss them all in time, but today I'm focusing on the Ruth Rendell mystery novel From Doon with Death, her 1964 debut book and the first of the long-running Inspector Wexford series...

Having already been won over to Ruth Rendell's writing from her books Portobello and The Crocodile Bird, I was anxious to see what this Inspector Wexford series would be like.  The locale is a small English town named Kingsmarkham and Reginald Wexford is the Chief Inspector for the police there, accompanied by Inspector Mike Burden on their cases.  In this first book, they have a murder to solve, that of a seemingly ordinary housewife with no apparent enemies or history to speak of.  What were Margaret Parson's routines, who knew her, what was the state of her marriage with her husband, and what was her past like? Wexford and Burden tackle these issues in detail and...guess what?  They solve the crime, of course...the culprit, while in 1964 probably caught the bulk of readers totally by surprise, in this year of 2016 would raise hardly an eyebrow.  So being as I am now a temporal resident of 2016 and no longer of 1964, I had pretty much figured it all out before the good inspector delivered his speech at the end revealing the murder mystery's solution...

I'm hoping that further books in this series are a little more difficult to solve and that the personality of the lead character of Inspector Wexford will be better developed.  He came across to me as a cranky, judgmental sort...not exactly someone that I would care to follow through a series.  On the other hand, Inspector Burden was more thoughtful and compassionate.  But it's not his series, is it?  Still, I intend to plod on through the books, hoping for better.  I will say this: Ruth Rendell's The Crocodile Bird and Portobello were much more meaningful and enjoyable for me than From Doon with Death.  Having said that, it must be recognized that the latter was her first book, and with first books it's a good idea to be light on the criticism.  The next Ruth Rendell book I'll be reading is a 1990 story credited to Barbara Vine, a pseudonym of Rendell's...