A Spot of Folly by Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell was as talented a short story writer as she was a crime novelist, and that's saying something, because so many of her novels were so good. I've devoured her various collections over the years, and now I've had a chance to read her final, posthumously published (in 2017) collection, A Spot of Folly, and to remind myself of her remarkable talent.

The hardback's dust jacket proclaims that it is a book of "New and Uncollected Short Stories." New? Well, they haven't previously been collected together in book form under Rendell's name, although one appeared in Winter's Crimes. But it simply is not correct to imply that these are "new" stories. Most of them were first published in the 1970s, and one of them, the splendid "The Irony of Hate", is discussed in some detail in Harry Keating's equally splendid book about the craft of crime writing. The most recent story was published more than a decade before this book.

Anyway, what of the book itself? It benefits from an intro by Sophie Hannah, who is like me a long-time Rendell fan, and the copyright page reveals that the selection was made by the very knowledgeable Tony Medawar. The contents are billed (more accurately this time) as "ten and a quarter stories" - the quarter story is just a few lines long, but it's neatly done. The story from Winter's Crimes, "A Drop Too Much", shows Rendell, unusually, in comic mode, and it's an entertaining biter-bit tale.

As for the others, they are a mixed bag. There are ghost stories, and also an interesting dystopian story, "Trebuchet", which deserves to be read more than once. It dates from the Eighties, and again it's best read if one remembers that it was written during the Cold War; even so, it has resonance today. There is also an intriguing and unusual story, "In the Time of his Prosperity" which I'm sure will stay in my mind. The novella "The Thief", alas, is a later work, and it rather illustrates Rendell's decline. Plenty of authors would be glad to have written it, but for such a superstar, it's pretty unconvincing. So, overall, this book is a mixed bag, but that is the nature of such things. I'm glad to have caught up with it.