Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

A family is massacred in a farmhouse in the Sussex countryside — mother, father, teenage daughter, and tutor all dead in what looks like a random act of extreme violence. Inspector Wexford takes the case with his usual careful methods, but the more he excavates the family's social world, the more he realizes that the violence concealed something the victims had reason to keep hidden. Ruth Rendell's fifteenth Wexford novel is among her darkest, and it turns the rural English mystery tradition toward something with genuine psychological weight.

Davina Porter has narrated the Wexford series across multiple entries, and her voice gives the novels their particular quality of elegant surface over troubled depth — a tone that is precisely right for Rendell's project. Her handling of the novel's eventual revelations is notably restrained, which makes the impact stronger. At just under 14 hours, Kissing the Gunner's Daughter is Rendell at full creative strength.