No Man's Nightingale

The Reverend Sarah Hussein is found strangled in her Kingsmarkham vicarage. She was mixed-race, single, female in a male-dominated institution, and working to modernize a traditional church — any of which might have generated enemies. Retired Chief Inspector Wexford is drawn into the investigation by the cleaning woman who works for both him and the vicar, and by his own inability to leave a case alone when it touches something genuinely interesting. Ruth Rendell's penultimate Wexford novel brings the series full circle to the private-consulting format of the early books.

Nigel Anthony narrates with the measured intelligence the Wexford series requires — the Chief Inspector's method is patient and unconventional, and Anthony's voice gives the reasoning its proper deliberate weight. At just under nine hours, No Man's Nightingale is a thoughtful farewell to an investigation of which Wexford may have complicated the evidence even as he solves it.