strange countries and secret worlds in ruth rendell's crime novels

STRANGE COUNTRIES AND SECRET WORLDS IN RUTH RENDELL’S CRIME NOVELS*

LISA KADONAGA

ABSTRACT. Mystery novels and academic geography have not often intersected. Yet crime fiction can incorporate spatial relationships and real-life regional characteristics. In recent decades mysteries have been freed from the long tradition of presenting elaborate puzzles, and now they feature human interactions in realistic settings. Writers like Ruth Rendell inte- grate place into their character development and plot lines. Rendell depicts changing urban landscapes in late-twentieth-century England and effectively explores contemporary Brit- ish culture. Keywords: England, landscape change, literarygeopphy, mysteries, place, territoriality.

gt the beginning of the twentieth century, commentators viewed crime fiction at best as an escapist diversion and at worst as a threat to morality that rivaled public drinking houses (Brunsdale 1990). Since then the genre, with an avid following in the tens of millions worldwide, has gained respectability. Recent estimates suggest that mystery novels account for at least 20 percent of all books sold (Klein i994), yet in spite of-or perhaps because of-their popularity, mysteries attract only modest academic attention. Contributions from studies in literature and history outnumber those from the social sciences. Nearly twenty years ago Gary Elbow and Tom Martin- son singled out mysteries, along with westerns and science fiction, as categories of writing that had been overlooked by geographers (1980). This situation has begun to change, for several reasons.

First, as the “new”cultura1 geography has gained greater acceptance, the study of works of fiction has become more widespread (Jackson 1989; Daniels 1992; Price and Lewis 1993). Leading scholars have contributed papers on the literary geography of detective fiction (Tuan i985), and classical mystery writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers have been analyzed by human and physical geographers (McManis 1978; Cerveny and Braze1 1989). More recent novels have also been explored (Monaghan 1987; Hamilton 1991; Hausladen 1995).

Second, a growing number of educators are adopting problem-based approaches to learning. The use of different facets of geography in solving hypothetical mysteries can be as informative as it is enjoyable (Felton and Allen 1987; Komoto and Gersmehl 1991; Hodder 1994). This counteracts public perception of geography as mere rote memorization and demonstrates the usefulness of geographical approaches in real- world situations.

’ This article benefited considerably from suggestions made by Paul F. Starrs, Gary J. Hausladen, and several anonymous reviewers. I would also like to thank Lawrence D. McCann and J. Douglas Porteous for their helpful advice and encouragement, Jill Jahansoozi for her enthusiasm, and Kathic Merriam for encouraging apprecia- tion of the mystery genre within our geography department.

%J Ms. KADONAGA is a doctoral candidate in geography at the University of Victoria, Victoria, Brit- ish Columbia, Canada v8w 3 ~ 5 .

The Geographical Review 88 (3): 413-428, July 1998 Copyright Q 1999 by the American Geographical Society of New York

414 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

Third, in recent years women’s experiences and perspectives have attracted the attention of many scholars. From the beginning, female writers have played a key role in the development of the mystery genre (Bargainnier 1981; Brunsdale 1990; Klein 1994). The Golden Age of the detective story-the 1920s-was also the time when women fought for legal status as persons, won the right to vote, and began to change the unwritten social code that dictated how a “lady” should behave. Many of the female mystery writers of that time, who were young, intelligent, well educated, and ambitious, championed feminist causes. Contemporary literary works, especially mysteries viewed as historical documents, are thus a valuable record of social change. Crime novelists, both British and American, continue to write about obstacles and challenges faced by today’s women (James 1972; Carlson 1993).

In addition, mysteries can themselves influence geography through the tourism and entertainment industries. Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories have attracted a cult following worldwide: Special tours and guidebooks cater to fans, and theme restaurants and pubs have sprung up around Baker Street in London (Kobayashi, Higashi- yama, and Uemura 1986). The English city of Oxford, already a popular tourist destination, has gained additional fame as the setting for mystery novels like Doro- thy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night (Hitchman 1975) and Colin Dexter’s Chief Inspector Morse series (Dale and Hendershott 1988; Glasson 1994). Similar situations occur elsewhere in the world; Joan Laxson, for example, cites the influence of Tony Hiller- man’s novels on tourism in the southwestern United States (1991).

REPRESENTATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY BY MYSTERY WRITERS His knowledge ofgeography was minimal. At his junior school, his teachers hadgiven him afew assortedfacts about the exports ofArgentina, Bolivia, Chile, and the rest; and at the age ofeight he had known-and still knew (with the exception ofsouth Dakota)-all the capital cities ofthe American States. But that was the end ofhis apprenticeship in that discipline.

-Colin Dexter, The Wench Is Dead, 1989

Accurate portrayals ofwhat geographers do are relatively uncommon in crime fiction. Authors tend to equate geographywith the memorization of place-names and exports or with mapmaking. However, a deeper understanding of geographical concepts is as essential for detective work as it is for psychology or chemistry. Solving a mystery frequently involves reconstructing the complex movements of individuals through space and time, akin to problems faced by spatial scientists. For this reason, geography is often a central element in mysteries, even if the author did not intend it to be.

In this article I focus on selected English authors, principally Ruth Rendell. Al- though Christie is arguably the most widely read of a succession of twentieth- century British mystery writers, her use of geography is parsimonious (McManis 1978). Sayers, her contemporary, was both less prolific and less popular, but she im- parts a much clearer sense of place. About The Five Red Herrings (1931), Sayers asserts that “All the places are real places and all the trains are real trains and all the landscapes are correct” (Dale 1978,90). Geographical accuracy is no guarantee of large

RUTH RENDELL’S CRIME NOVELS 415

sales; most mystery writers, however, do end up using geography, whether to define spatial relationships for plot purposes, to create a realistic background, or to incorporate actual theories studied by geographers. Gary Hausladen identifies a number of police procedurals that entwine place with plot development, heightening real- ism and captivating an audience (1996).

Julian Symons argues that when Christie began her career, the traditional format of mystery or detective fiction required a puzzle-like plot that placed more emphasis on how a crime was committed than on the reasons behind it (1985). The predomi- nant approach today is to examine why the event occurred. The crime may itself be “demystifiefl-viewed, for example, through the eyes of the victim or the perpetra- tor, so that a reader begins a book already knowing who is responsible. The same method is frequently employed in the related genres of suspense and horror.

In the new style of mysteries, the guilty are not singled out by the master detective during a satisfying final scene “with everyone assembled in the drawing room of the country house” (McConnell1988,124). Rather, the mystery is in trying to make sense of what happened, imposing retrospective order on the events of an imper- fectly observed past. This is little different from the process experienced by geographers, historians, and other researchers who try to reconstruct real-life occurrences. A solution may be arrived at, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. Few academic theories are unequivocal: “As book superseded book. . . [ ,] would there ever come a time when the last word had been said?” (Crispin i979,19). When everything is open to question, it squelches the possibility that a clear flash of insight will ever reveal an en- tire truth. Writers such as Frank McConnell, himself a professor of English, apply this academic ambivalence to crime: “Nothing is ever solved . . . [ ,] so you just as- sume that the law’s solution is the solution” (1988,185).

The shift over the past half-century from the “how”and “who”of detective stories to the “why”of crime novels has been to the benefit of geographers. In consider- ing human relationships, the newer mysteries permit examination of the cultural and psychological conditions that make crimes and their aftereffects possible. David Herbert discusses major problems in literary geography, including topics that are too narrowly defined and a preoccupation with “objective reality rather than with human experience” (1991, i95), favoring, overall, “landscapes of the ground” instead of “landscapes of the mind” explored by John Barrel1 (1982) and Douglas Porteous (1985). Herbert propounds that geographers should focus on the essential concept of place, including comparisons of place as perceived by different kinds of people, the study of what life is (or was) like in other societies, and factors that shape and maintain social order.

Not all mystery novels are equally valuable for geographical research: Consider- able differences exist among writers, due to distinctive regional and period characteristics and to individual styles. Especially intriguing to geographers are depictions of natural and cultural environments, use of “insider” regional knowledge, and in- corporation of themes that include cultural or landscape change, social alienation, violence, and economic inequalities. These are the terrain of Ruth Rendell.


GEOGRAPHICAL ELEMENTS IN THE NOVELS OF RUTH RENDELL Born in London in 1930 and educated in Essex, Rendell was a reporter for a local newspaper while she was still in her teens (Bakerman 1981). She has written more than forty novels and dozens of short stories since her first book was published in 1964.The numerous prizes she has won include a British National Book Award, three Crime Writers Association Gold Daggers, and four Edgar Allen Poe Awards from the Mystery Writers of America (Gale Research 1991). Despite this critical acclaim and her increasing popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, few academic studies have been made ofher work (Bakerman 1981; Woeller and Cassiday 1988; Alexander 1994). Those who have analyzed her writing have tended to separate her books into three main categories: the Chief Inspector Wexford series; a group of unrelated novels fo- cusing on the behavioral aspects of crime; and several books published since 1986 under the name of Barbara Vine.

A feature common to all three types is that Rendell’s plots frequently take the form of a psychological “whydunnit,” for, like McConnell, she believes that a crime cannot be understood outside the context of the people involved. In Some Lie and Some Die, Chief Inspector Wexford tells Joan Miall, a witness: “[ Ilt’s invaluable to know as much as may be known about the character and the tastes and the peculiari- ties of the victim.” Miall replies, “[Pleople are little worlds, aren’t they? There’s so much in everyone, depths and layers, strange countries if we’re talking about worlds. I might just be showing you the wrong country” (Rendell 1973,121).

Rendell’s writing is far more geographical than is that of someone like Christie, for she goes beyond spatial description to incorporate territory, place, and other elaborate concepts. Conveying a sense of place requires sensitivity to physical and social processes that have influenced the development of landscapes. True, describ- ing a setting in terms of orientation and distances may satisfy the technical aspects of the plot, but additional details about historical changes, economic activity, and social problems add believability. The concept of territory is also related to place, but it is more dependent on the experiences and viewpoints of particular individuals (Goodall 1987), like the mental maps popularized by Peter Gould and Rodney White (1986).

SPATIAL ASPECTS OF DESCRIPTION

Rendell uses a variety of techniques to illustrate spatial relationships. Frequently, she describes paths that connect locations in the story, contributing to the impression of a whole environment, not merely an assortment of stagelike settings isolated from one another in time and space. She also consistently tries to give an accurate picture of regional transportation networks, including highway routes and the geography of the multileveled London subway (Vine 1991).

Approximately half of Rendell’s books are police procedurals that deal with events in and around the fictional setting of Kingsmarkham, “a sizable town some- where in the middle of Sussex” (1978,3). The surrounding environment includes not only cattle pastures and country mansions but also recently built subdivisions and


industrial parks. Over the past three decades Rendell has systematically built up a picture of the town and adjoining areas, sometimes returning to the same neighborhood after a number of years to pursue an unrelated case. Detailed passages describe Kingsmarkham’s layout like an aerial photograph:

A lonely country road links Kingsmarkham with Pomfret.. . .Almost the last building in Kingsmarkham is the police station. On the other side of the High Street Cheriton Lane runs down to the buildings and courts of the Kingsmarkham Tennis Club, and half a dozen other narrow roads comprise a small residential web. The gardens of houses in Forest Park back onto open fields, and fields traversed by a footpath lie between the club grounds and the town. The street lamps stop two hundred yards on the Pomfret side of the police station.. . .Roughly halfway between the towns, at the point of no return, is the bus stop with bus shelter. (Rendell 1985b, 50)

Another of Rendell’s spatial techniques is taking in viewsheds. The central feature of the city in Talking to Strange Men (1987b) is a digital clock atop an office tower. The visibility of the clock from various locations is mentioned more than a dozen times during the novel, effectively tying the city into a web of sightlines. Less obvious is her use of landmarks around Kingsmarkham to orient the reader. The bells of local churches can be heard some distance away (1970,169; 197~65). A stone obelisk appears in one novel (1985b, 50,74), and a prehistoric circle is featured in another (1988, 24, 152). A contrasting absence of spatial clues deliberately invokes uncer- tainty and disorientation, as in Chief Inspector Wexford’s visit to an isolated farm- house: “All was darkness but for the area immediately ahead, illuminated by their own headlights.. . . [ Olver the low hill the invisible town . . . might as well have been a hundred miles away” (1988, 18).

DEPICTIONS OF PLACE

Descriptions of distances and topography are not especially technical in Rendell’s novels, but a reader is constantly aware of a sophisticated sense of place. A longtime resident of Suffolk, she has written a pair of nonfiction books about that area (Ren- dell 1989; Rendell and Ward 1989), including in them many real-life details that resur- face in her fiction. These may be regional customs, such as the practice of installing scarecrows in cherry orchards (Rendell 1985a, 1988), or landmarks like the otter sanc- tuary (1987b) and seaside nuclear power station (Vine 1995). She frequently incorpo- rates knowledge of local environments-an exchange between two characters illustrates her awareness of prevailing temperatures in southern England: “Some- where between twelve and twenty degrees, wouldn’t you think? On the twenty- seventh of July at ten fifteen in the morning?” (Rendell 1987b, 264).

Rendell adds color and timelines in taking note of extreme events, such as the unusually hot summers of 1976 and 1984 (Green 1977; Burt 1984; Vine 1987). Con- cerned with accuracy, she obtained weather information from the meteorological office (Gale Research 1991). The powerful forest-flattening gale of 1987, described in her book on Suffolk (Rendell 1989), figures in two of her novels (1991,1993). Other detailed real-life landscape changes she catalogues are the destruction wrought by


Dutch elm disease (1978) and the displacement of many of England’s ancient de- ciduous woodlands by plantations of imported conifers (Vine 1987).

Many novelists, including those in the mystery genre, have described twentieth- century changes in both rural and urban areas. In 1935 Sayers commented on a quickening pace of development along the road to Oxford. Rendell frequently includes observations about economic and cultural changes, with particular attention to urban planning and architecture. For the Wexford novels and stories she has created several communities adjacent to Kingsmarkham, with their own histories and cultural characteristics: tiny rural hamlets like Forby, the ancient university town of Myringham, declining industrial centers like Stowerton, and new subdivisions such as Highlands. The fictional London borough of Kenbourne has also appeared several times.

As cities expand they can engulf nearby communities, submerging their cultural identities in the process. Once a tranquil rural setting, Kenbourne has become an urban slum (Rendell 1972). She depicts such “lost villages” on the outskirts of the big city (1978,66) as “half-swallowed . . . like a small pretty fish might be devoured by a predatory shark” (1987b, 13).

Another type of urban change involves the construction of housing developments farther out in the country. Urban geographers have documented the origins of the New Town and Garden Suburb movements, as well as the face of their present- day legacies (Osborn and Whittick 1969; Thompson 1982; Lawless and Brown 1986). The fictional borough of Kenbourne and Wexford’s own neighborhood in Kings- markham are examples of developments from the 1920s and 1930s: “[TI he district. . . was one of those ‘nice’ suburbs which sprang up to cover open country between the two world wars.. . [ ,] a street of comfortable-looking semi-detached houses.. . where cars were tucked away into garages, doorsteps held neat little plastic containers for milk bottles, and dogs were confined behind wrought-iron gates” (Rendell 1978,67).

The next wave of development came after World War 11. Council estates prolifer- ated, recognizable as public-assisted housing by the smaller size of the dwellings and their less elaborate design: “The bungalow.. . had such a stark and barren look about it that you might have thought it brand-new but for the unmistakable building features-you couldn’t call it architecture-of the early sixties. . . . [Tlhe house was a low-roofed L shape of light pink brickwork with square metal-framed windows” (Rendell 1987b, 164).

Although the plans are different, these projects are still being constructed. The Highlands housing development dates from the early 1980s: “[TI he estate had been put up by the local authority some seven years ago. . . . Smallish blocks of flats not more than three storeys high alternated with terraces of semi-detached houses, and.. . a row of tiny bungalows designed as housing for the elderly” (Rendell 1988,24). “Be- yond the window the Highlands estate presented a panorama. . . . [Plantiled roofs [were] deliberately placed at odd angles to one another to give the illusion of some little hillside town in Spain or Portugal-coniferous trees bluish, dark green and golden- green because conifers are cheap and grow swiftly, winding gravel paths” (p. 41).


Both prewar and postwar developments involved the destruction of old houses and the construction of a multitude of new ones. Christie was of the express opinion that such changes were for the worse (McManis 1978; Hart 1985). The demolition of historic buildings and the intrusion of telephone wires and paved roads into the countryside were not the only factors to cause dismay among established landhold- ers. An influx of large numbers of people, often of a socioeconomic class and cultural background different from that of the old-guard gentry, created a backlash ranging from snobbery to outright protest (Rendell 1973, 1983). Rendell’s view of these changes is quite distinct from Christie’s: Although she accepts the need for low-income housing, she is critical of economic conditions that favor the construction of “five-bedroom ranch [houses]” for wealthy yuppie commuters, instead of rental housing suitable for young rural workers (Rendell and Ward 1989,34-35).

Despite its distance from London and other major population centers, Kings- markham changes with the times, evolving from a series of 1930s developments around the original village into a town with a population of 78,000 half a century later (Rendell 1985b). That modified and modernized town is complete with outly- ing suburbs, supermarkets, a new bus station, and shopping malls. Such equanimity is in marked contrast to Christie’s pursed-lips style. Although Christie incorporated postwar alterations into her quintessential English village of St. Mary Mead, home to the indomitable Miss Jane Marple, she by and large clung to an idealized, Edward- ian past. She recognized that for a setting not to change was unnatural (1965)~ but she was either unable or unwilling to include many of the things she must have wit- nessed through the i96os-the rise of the electronic media, unemployment, youth counterculture, and racial tensions.

In contrast, Rendell’s settings are alive and evolving. Cities gleam with the bur- nished steel and sheer glass of new skyscrapers, and concrete overpasses shake under the noise of rush-hour traffic. In her books a quaint, traditional English landscape is cause for suspicion: It is probably a tourist trap or a nostalgic throwback artificially maintained for the benefit of the well-to-do, like the pastoral beauty of Tancred House or Joyce Virson’s thatched cottage (1991).

Rendell emphasizes that she did not intend Kingsmarkham to be a stereotypical “pretty village” (Gale Research 1991). Many of the places where her characters live arid work, including Wexford’s office, are prosaic, even ugly: “Kingsmarkham Police Station had been built about fifteen years before, and the conservative townsfolk had been shocked by.. . this stark white box with its flat roof and wide picture windows” (Rendell 1978,17). Of contemporary Suffolk, one character observes: “These country towns are strange places. They aren’t like what you’d think from the descriptions in guidebooks . . . pretty and cozy with nice fresh air and happy people leading re- laxed lives.. . . The reality is different. For one thing, they have great sprawling industrial estates . . . [ , and] at four-thirty or five the cars start coming out, thousands of them . . . clogging up the roads and queuing at traffic lights” (Vine 1ggo,44-45).

Large country manors, a mainstay of prewar detective fiction, have undergone their own vigorous changes. Rendell mentions several: The Regency mansion Sun-

420 T H E GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

days, on the outskirts of Kingsmarkham, has appeared more than once in the Wex- ford series (1973,1988). By the 1980s this great house, once inhabited by a rich and privileged family, has become the headquarters of a social-services agency. Other private mansions in the vicinity have fallen into ruin, have been pulled down, or have been converted into trout farms. In real life such old manor houses were regu- larly lost to neglect or urban expansion, until heritage laws came into effect in recent times (1989).

Rendell describes the transformations of urban neighborhoods as well. As new buildings appear, a patchwork of different-aged structures is created; gardens and vacant lots are infilled with townhouses and monster trophy homes (1978,1994). She comments on the postmodern fashion of mixing together earlier styles and actual pieces of older buildings (1994, 62). As in the real world, the gentrification and retrofitting of genuine heritage properties is widespread. Pentecost Villas, a dilapi- dated terrace of Victorian houses, is scheduled for conversion into luxury condo- miniums. The building firm intends to “put new windows in and [plaster] their outsides and put up new balconies . . . [and] arches and split levels and kitchens and bathrooms” (1987b, 253). Rendell’s detailed descriptions of houses reflect her own interest in domestic architecture (Gale Research 1991). Dwellings have also been an important topic for literary geographers (Salter and Lloyd 1977).

Social and technological changes are apparent in Rendell’s latest novels: Word processors and laser printers replace typewriters, public telephones are accessed with magnetic cards, and automatic teller machines dispense cash at any hour of the day or night. Wexford has acquired a cellular phone, the gadget of the 1990s. On a grimmer note, reminders of economic hardship are constant. University graduates are going overseas for lack of work at home, and other young people turn to cottage industry to make ends meet. The homeless are evident even in Kingsmarkham, and formerly prosperous professionals are obliged to register for social assistance.

English culture has also undergone a transformation: Rainbow-haired punks roam the streets, British passports are issued “in the dark red and gold binding of the European Union” ( Rendell i994,48), and tea is sold in herbal-flavored bags. Ren- dell’s characters are just as likely to eat pizza or Indonesian take-out food as traditional standbys like steak-and-kidney pie. Rising consumerism is apparent. Like many other cities in Western Europe, Kingsmarkham has acquired an American- style shopping mall. Rendell’s description of one such place is at once playful and critical:

He had just come from the Barringdean Centre, the new shopping complex built to look like a castle. That was the style modern planners thought suitable on the outskirts of an ancient Sussex town where nothing genuinely medieval remained. Per- haps that was why. Anyway the centre looked less like a real castle than a toy one. . . . Shaped like a capital “I,” it had four towers on the ends and a row of little turrets along its length. . . . But inside all was of the late twentieth century.. . . A Tesco super- store filled the whole crosspiece of the “1”on both floors at this end, British Home Stores the other. (1988,1-2)


The I-shaped design of Rendell’s fictional mall is quite common (Goss 1993). Change the anchor stores and it could be anywhere in the industrialized world, from Stuttgart to San Diego. The placelessness conveyed by the presence of multinational corporations and of standard features like escalators and tiled floors is characteristic of modernism. However, the Barringdean Centre imitates a medieval castle on the outside, complete with colored banners on the parapets and ersatz arrow slits.

These postmodern elements, of the type that Jeffrey Hopkins (1990) identifies as metonymical icons, are meant to evoke a sense of being elsewhere-or, more accu- rately, “elsewhen.” Jon Goss (1993) notes that other shopping malls have been designed to resemble Arabian Casbahs or rustic Mexican villages, just as hotels and casinos are masquerading as updated versions of Egyptian pyramids (Weathersby 1994) or Wild West silver mines (Cashill 1996). History, repackaged, is marketed to consumers as yet another commodity.

Ironically, most of Rendell’s stories take place in England, where real medieval castles exist but-like Cavalier battlefields, Roman roads, and Neolithic stone cir- cles-are being threatened by urban encroachment. Rendell acknowledges that this type of historical appropriation is not a recent fad but has for some time been part of English culture. It has met with varying degrees of success, as demonstrated by her criticism of the neo-Tudor revival earlier this century (1973).

DEPICTIONS OF TERRITORY

Rendell is particularly sophisticated in the place-related concepts that make up her chosen territories, whether political or personal. She mentions the administrative disruption caused in England when county boundaries were changed in 1974: “The blurring of boundaries, which tookplace at about that time, had created such anoma- lies as a householder having an Essex postal address while paying his rates to Suffolk County Council“ (Vine 1987, 26). Municipal taxes were not the only issues at stake. Rendell’s fellow mystery writer Ellis Peters protested eloquently against the “mutila- tion” of these borders:

Only after generations of continuous and consenting habitation can the shire take shape as a genuine entity, capable of establishing a character of its own, even a distinctive language, and inspiring affection and alocal patriotic fervour in its people.. . . [ I ] t is not a good idea, after settled centuries, suddenly to meddle with the established arrangements, invent three or four new counties with synthetic names out of the mangled remnants of well-established old ones, and jettison one jealously de- fended shire altogether. (Peters i994,7)

Likewise, Ruth Rendell and Colin Ward argue that this reorganization turned out to be “an expensive disaster”: “We spend half a lifetime coming to terms with the local- ity.. . . If some administrative decision re-defines it, we may feel lost for the rest of our lives” (1989,49).

In attempting to reconcile abstract political boundaries with neighborhood identities defined by the inhabitants, Rendell frequently draws on her characters’


store of local knowledge. Wexford familiarizes himself with London while conva- lescing with relatives in the city: “Theresa Street, where his nephew’s house was, lay on the borders of fashionable Chelsea, outside them ifyou hold that the King’s Road ends at Beaufort Street. Wexford was beginning to pick up these bits of with-it lore” (Rendell 1972, 9).

Wexford’s attachment to Kingsmarkham is evident: “Born up the road in Pom- fret, living most of his life in this part of Sussex. . . he knew the district well enough for the map on the buttercup-yellow wall to be regarded merely as a decoration” (Rendell 1964,21). His identity is so closely bound up with his home and his work that he feels incomplete if he is deprived of them. Among strangers in London, he literally aches for “[ t]he green Sussex meadows, the pine forest, the high street full of people he knew and who knew him” (Rendell 1972,14).

The chief inspector’s personal territory is defined by a few touchstone locations that appear repeatedly in the series: the Olive and Dove, where he meets fellow detective Mike Burden for drinks; small local restaurants like the Carousel; and, for special occasions, the Cheriton Forest Hotel. Here Wexford and his wife endure an unpleas- ant evening with an obnoxious “post-post-modernist” writer: “Wexford and Dora were not the hosts but the restaurant was in their neighborhood, they were in a sense responsible for it” ( Rendell 1991,136).

Occasionally Rendell mentions landscape features that are well known to some but not all of her characters, thereby emphasizing the essential role that individual experiences play in the construction of mental maps. The gardener Will Palmer is taken aback to learn that the police investigators are not familiar with Cleever’s Vale, a local landmark: “It was evidently inconceivable to him that anyone, especially a policeman, should be ignorant of something that to Myfleet was as much a part of the scene as the forest itself” (1970,124). In Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter, Brenda Harri- son is “one of those people who expect everyone to know, as well as they themselves do, the workings and rules and geography of their little private world” (i991,40).

Rendell’s suspense-espionage novel, Talking to Strange Men (1987b), is radically different from her previous work in style and content. Her use of clandestine urban territories is reminiscent of John le Carrk at the height of the cold war. Whereas Jim Prideaux, in le Carrk’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (i974), sought refuge at a school, in Rendell’s book a school becomes the focal point for an intrigue involving a make- believe game of espionage played by teenagers: “[ N] ow they found themselves on opposing sides. Literally so, for like the West and the Soviets they were divided by a barrier which in fact separated east from west, in their case the river that split the city. . . . They were apart in a not dissimilar way from that in which the Western and East- ern blocs on an international level were apart” (Rendell 1987b, 48).

The action spills into the city beyond, which is demarcated further by safe houses, message drops, and hangouts for the opposing groups. The youngsters wan- der from affluent, red-brick suburbs to the central business district, through tourist- filled shopping areas and the drab semi-industrial quarter. Rendell gives the story a phenomenological twist by superimposing yet another landscape on these imagi-


nary territorial boundaries-the world of the main adult protagonist, John Creevey. Although Creevey sees many of the same landmarks that the children do, his memo- ries and experiences result in a profoundly different mental map.

Territoriality can have a negative side. Several times in Rendell’s books, obses- sion with a particular location is viewed as a mark of eccentricity or as something more sinister: Both the narrator Elvira in Heartstones (1987a) and Eve Beck in The Crocodile Bird (1993) have literally fallen in love with a place and are willing to go to extreme lengths to possess it.

RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER

Rendell often examines territorial variations in social issues that pertain to race, class, and gender. She examines the landscapes that various characters perceive in terms of their attractions, obstacles, and, especially, threats. In A Fatal Inversion she views an East London neighborhood through the eyes of Shiva, a young East Indian man. Although born and raised in England, Shiva is wary and ill at ease in British society, and he experiences “all the immigrant’s protective reactions’’ (Vine 1987,20). As the story unfolds and he encounters hostility and discrimination, we begin to un- derstand why. Many are the foreshadowings of the danger he will face at the end of the book: verbal abuse, hurled stones, racist graffiti, and garbage pushed through his letter slot at night. In Simisola (1994) the Akandes, a well-educated and ambitious Af- rican family, move into a white, Anglo-Saxon community, only to have their neigh- bors put their houses up for sale. Wexford declares: “We’re all racist in this country.. . . People over forty are worse.. . .We were conditioned that way and it’s in us still, it’s in- eradicable’’ (pp. 11-12).

In Rendell’s writing the connection between recreational travel and class barri- ers is particularly strong. She examines a widespread view that broadening one’s personal horizons through travel is a privilege of the wealthy elite. The well-traveled people in her books are almost always well-off: The Knightons, who flaunt their wealth in search of ever-more exotic destinations, are an extreme example (Rendell 1983). Adam Verne-Smith shows a double set of prejudices when he assumes that all the dark-skinned people assembled in the arrivals lounge at Heathrow are Third World refugees and thinks “how remarkable it was that these people could afford to travel about Europe” (Vine 1987,15).

As for the poor, Rendell’s judgmental Mike Burden is enraged that unemployed people are spending money to travel out of town, if only as far as the next major city: “They’ve got no jobs, they’re living on [Income Support], and they still splash out on drinks and dates with girls and God knows what for train fares” (i994,41). He sees mobility as a prerogative of responsible citizens, not to be enjoyed by an underclass. Wexford does not share this bias but nonetheless experiences a twinge of middle- class guilt when he takes work-related trips to France, China, and California.

Rendell notes that younger people seem to have a different attitude toward travel. After attending a university, Peter Naulls goes to live in Nepal (1982a); and the doomed teenager Giles Mont is saving up for a trip to India (1986). The impov-


erished young laborer Sean Holford applies for a training course in Glasgow (1993), and Wexford’s own grandsons demonstrate interest in global culture (1994). For them, travel is not a way to show off money and prestige but a step toward attaining greater knowledge and improving oneself intellectually or, in Giles’s case, spiritu- ally.

Three of Rendell’s characters use television as part of their territories, neatly compensating for lack of mobility. Interestingly, all are women. Young Liza Beck is prohibited from leaving the Shrove estate grounds by her mother: Her sole avenue of escape to the outside world is through an old black-and-white television set that is locked in a disused room (1993). Eunice Parchman is functionally illiterate (1986); Loveday Morgan, raised within the confines of a repressive religious community, is fascinated by the diverse lifestyles exhibited on the small screen (1972).

Rendell refuses to romanticize life in rural England. Instead, she emphasizes the stress imposed by isolation and the potential danger, particularly for women, of being so far removed from town. One character guardedly remarks, “[Wlomen on their own in lonely places do get murdered” (1970,47). Master ofthe Moor (1982a) is set in a rural district, where young women are concealing or dyeing their hair, for fear of being singled out by a serial killer with a preference for blondes. Rendell’s short story “An Outside Interest’’ describes gender-based differences in the perception of dangerous landscapes: (‘Things are quite different for a man, he never thinks about being afraid of . . . dark or lonely places” (1982b, 54). In Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter Wexford is reluctant to let Daisy Flory, the seventeen-year-old survivor of a massacre that claimed the rest of her family, return to live alone in the country because “she was young and a woman and defenseless” (1991,191). Although Rendell is sympathetic with the aims of the feminist movement, she describes herself as mod- erate in outlook (Symons 1994). Killers are afforded equal, gender-based opportu- nity: They are as likely to be women as men, even those who use such brusquely direct methods as stabbing or strangulation.

Even if murder is not the result, many of Rendell’s plots and subplots draw attention to the difficulties and contradictions women face in today’s society. A Sleeping Life captures the extraordinary steps taken by a woman who is trying to have a suc- cessful career (1978). Simisola explores the exploitation of female domestic servants by wealthy British households (1994). Other books in the Wexford series show the continuing conflict between the policeman’s older daughter and her husband, the result of her desire for economic and social independence. Rendell frequently criti- cizes the tacit cultural assumption that women have a duty to care for infirm parents and to tend the children of dead or absent relatives (1971,1978).

Rendell also tries to explore the complexity of these issues, however. In her books we find many characters who support the status quo: traditional-minded servants who are opposed to democratizing the class structure; women who are antifemi- nists, consciously or unconsciously. Georgina Villiers is only in her late twenties but, much to Wexford’s discomfort, boasts of having given up her job when she was mar- ried and asks, “Don’t you think a woman ought to stay at home and look after her


husband?” (1970, 65). Mike Burden’s wife, Jenny, who sees herself as “a feminist, a supporter of the women’s movement” (1985b, 66), unexpectedly has a violent reac- tion to the possibility that her unborn child may be a girl. Later her husband admits, “We didn’t know, either of us, what a lot of deep-rooted, old-fashioned prejudices we had” (p. 191).

By her broad-minded, complex portrayals of individuals in society, Rendell re- minds us that the cultural acceptance of discrimination and double standards cuts across gender, race, and socioeconomic lines. As quoted in Symons, she even ques- tions her own motives in having a man as the protagonist in the Wexford mysteries: “[ L] ike most women I am very much still caught up in the web that one writes about men because men are the people and we are the others’’ (1985,179). In 1981 Earl Bar- gainnier wrote that the creation of male or neuter identities by female mystery writers was a topic that should be investigated; more than a decade later, Sara Paretsky (1994) noted that there was still a need for academic research on portrayals of women in crime fiction. This area assuredly requires further study.

CONCLUSION

“I’m an expert on Kenbourne Vale, a walking mine of information.” He tapped the side of his head. “There are unwritten history and geography books in here.”

-Ruth Rendell, Murder Being Once Done, 1972

Ruth Rendell is an English mystery writer who conveys a strong sense of place, especially through her sumptuously realistic descriptions and her insider’s knowledge of three main settings: the counties of Sussex and Suffolk and the city of London. She provides ample material for examining the concept of place, as it is perceived by characters of different ages and diverse backgrounds. In particular, she avoids pic- turesque, tourist-board descriptions of pastoral landscapes and addresses instead the real social issues that are evident in late-twentieth-century England: unemployment, environmental degradation, housing shortages, racial and gender discrimination, and theloneliness faced by many people with the collapse offamilystructures.

Her work is a particularlygood choice for geographical research, for she includes innumerable details about southeastern England, where she has lived and worked for the past few decades. She shows concern for issues that are being studied bygeog- raphers, planners, and sociologists. Her nonfiction treatise calling for decentraliza- tion (Rendell and Ward 1989), a departure from her usual works of fiction, offers some additional insight into her views. She paints a picture of government bureauc- racy gone wrong: postwar centralized socialism turned to the rampant privatization of the Thatcher years; the waiving of restrictions on development in sensitive rural areas to permit monster homes; and young people being forced to leave small towns and seek a living elsewhere, for lack of jobs and housing. Road Rage, one of the most recent Wexford novels (ig97), begins with Kingsmarkham itself being threatened by the construction of a new highway.


Symons, a mystery writer and critic, is wary of any attempt to study an art form merely because it is popular (1985); doubtless many geographers would agree with him. Herbert notes that criticism has been leveled at essays which do little more than “quarry”various sources for their geographical content (1991). He believes, however, that useful insights can be gained from literary geography, provided that researchers concentrate on the concept of place, as perceived and experienced by individuals and groups through the landscapes of the mind.

This strategy can lead to unexpected findings, such as uncovering economic and social inequities that may be overlooked by casual observers. If anything, crime fiction is more likely to dwell on the secretive or unsavory aspects of a setting, an approach that is also employed by a handful of self-proclaimed radical scholars. Yi-Fu Tuan discusses the similarities between the “dark London” of Sherlock Holmes, a sinister underworld of fog-shrouded alleyways and criminal gangs, and the hidden violence and exploitation of the Victorian era (1985). In Sirnisalu Rendell calls attention to actual cases of modern slavery, documented by human-rights groups (1994). Other contemporary mysterywriters explore issues like substance abuse, ethnic tensions, and racism (Hausladen 1996).

Future geographical research might involve exploring the application of “foren- sic geography” to solve real or imaginary crimes; examining fictional portrayals of territoriality in underworld organizations; assessing the use of geography by other established genre writers, such as Howard Engel or John D. MacDonald; and com- paring the work of several different mystery writers to build up a literary portrait of Chicago, Los Angeles, Arizona, or the Pacific Northwest, much as Hausladen has done for Moscow (1995).

Writers of crime fiction exhibit a wide range of talent, as do contributors to other genres and art forms-they are not all equally observant, imaginative, and skilled at conveying ideas. Nonetheless, many mystery novels, because of their style and content, would be of interest to geographers even if this genre were not popular. Literary criticism is subject to individual preference and to changing social atti- tudes, but the world created by a meticulous writer can be interpreted by geographers, even decades later (Salter and Lloyd 1977). Like other types of novels, mysteries can be a revealing source of qualitative information about the diverse viewpoints and conflicts in contemporary societies. The strong sense of place exhibited by mystery writers such as Ruth Rendell is a valuable contribution, equally so to future work in literary geography and to altering the public perceptions of what we do as geographers.

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