I don't know about professional reviewers, but I couldn't finish the two books of hers that I tried. Didn't care about the protagonist. Didn't care about the plot. Didn't care about anything she mentioned, basically. I was disappointed, because they'd been recommended by people whose other book choices I'd really liked.

I haven't read her last few - writing mysteries, I don't dare read new stuff in mid-write. Bad on every level.

But everything through the early nineties in the Inspector Wexford series - I think "Simisola" was the most recent of hers I've read, and she took on some very difficult stuff in there - knocks me out. I love "Dark Adapted Eye", as well.

But if I was reccing Rendell? It would be two non-Wexford mysteries, oddly enough. "A Demon In My View" just floors me - about a serial killer, and I don't remember it missing on a single cylinder. The other, "To Fear A Painted Devil" (she likes Shakespearean quotes, Rendell does!) is another corker. Very much about character and situation, and one is dark in North London (my old 'hood, perfectly done), the other is sun-soaked in the countryside. Killer books, those two.

Early Rendell/Vine is indeed stunning - my favourite by a nose is probably Asta's Book . The most recent of hers I've read is the latest Wexford, Babes in the Wood . I loved Wexford, as always, but the identity of the villain & the nature of their villany was totally obvious (even to me, a rather unobservant reader) - bad for any mystery, and very unusual for her.

Dani -- I think that's Anna's Book in the U.S., and I loved that one, too. What I hated about The Blood Doctor was that she tried to do the same thing with a diary/letters and uncovering the truth about a family member, and it was just a huge yawn. Also loved The House of Stairs. More of a whydunit than a whodunit.

flea -- I love characters and dialogue, too. It's one of the reasons Regencies are so much fun. Like listening in on a private conversation between two very bright, very witty people.

Betsy HP -- Were you in NYC last summer? My favorite was New Orleans a few years ago. Hot as hell, and even more humid, but I'd never been there before.

I think one thing that gets me about the literary elite is the whole "popular = bad" equation they seem to be taught at birth. Right now I'm reading (and okay, it's a friend's book, but still) A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray -- it's a YA novel set in 1895, featuring a 16-year-old girl sent to boarding school when her mother dies, who realizes that she has visions. Magic, other realms, and general spookiness ensue, but what I love is that the girls she describes are REAL. They're 1895 real on one level, true, but they're any-era real, as well. The story is just boiling along in the best page-turning sense, but she explores with these girls and the themes of power, individuality, and society is deep stuff. Plus, her writing is fabulous -- lush (but not too) balanced with straighforward. I've never understood why the critics don't understand (or don't advocate for) good writing that tells a kick-ass story.

Dani, have you read A Judgement in Stone? A non-Wexford, utterly terrifying, and just inexorable, the story of what happens is like a damned steamroller, no getting out of its way. Amazing book.

I have two shelves of Rendell, early stuff, and the only one that flipped me and hit me wrong was An Unkindness of Ravens. I didn't like the message in that one, I didn't like her extraneous characters, and it hit me as weirdly antifeminist.

I think one thing that gets me about the literary elite is the whole "popular = bad" equation they seem to be taught at birth.

Heh. Nodding furiously in agreement here. And I loved Stephen King's evil little comment at the American Book Awards, about, did they think they got some kind of intellectual points for snubbing their own culture?

Not saying it was the most appropriate venue for him to say it, but I'm still pleased that he said it at all.

Stephen King's evil little comment at the American Book Awards, about, did they think they got some kind of intellectual points for snubbing their own culture?

Oh, I think they believe they do. It's like little kids, kind of -- "We'll have a club, and it'll be super-secret, and only people who know this handshake and that head toss will be allowed to join, and..." They don't seem to realize that not too many people actually want to be in that club. Great writing is great writing, no matter where it's published, and if lots of people read it, isn't that a Good?

There's definitely a "smarter than you unwashed masses" attitude about the subjects covered, too. Which is another reason romance gets scoffed at, of course. But how smart is it to write books most people don't want to read, and make only a subsistence living doing it? I'm definitely not saying authors should dumb it down or cater to the lowest common denominator, but I'm going to read someone who's telling me a decent story over someone who is spouting what s/he learned from a desktop "word a day" calendar and imbuing every possible sentence with Important Symbolism and Metaphor. (Or allergory? Heh.)

Not to Buffy up the topic, but that's the way I've always felt about the show. People see vampires and roll their eyes, but those of who are actually smart enough to get the bigger picture know it's about Life and Love and Redemption and Identity...but it's wrapped in a stylish blond package with demons! and puns! and blood! and leather pants!, and written by some of the smartest folks writing for TV anywhere, anytime.

Must. Get. Back. To. Work.

There's definitely a "smarter than you unwashed masses" attitude about the subjects covered, too.

Yup. That, and "oh, you don't live in Manhattan? You mean there are people who write things who don't?" 'tude about, specifically, the NYTBR, that makes me whacky. It's a very parochial attitude to have about books, and it came out loud and clear in the recent kerfuffle over the changes they're planning on making to the NYTBR. Feh.

And as someone who is writing crossover genre but who has also written literary fiction, I like 'em both. What I don't like is some candyassed Yale grad at a city desk somewhere, assuming that because someone like Mailer wrote it, it must be literary, and therefore "worth" reading.

I agree that popular=bad has been the reigning critical stance for certainly the last 30 years. What's ironic about it is that many of the writers in the Western canon, including Shakespeare, Dickens and Twain, were wildly popular in their time. Popular taste does not always stand the test of time; the public loved Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth and Josiah Allen's Wife and didn't think much of Hawthorne and Melville. Still, if you go back a hundred years, popularity seems to be about as good a predictor of literary worth as critical acclaim.

*cough*

Yale graduate. Living in New York.

Just sayin'.

Micole, you also read a broad spectrum of stuff and I've yet to see you sneer. There are some damned good editors out there. The problem is with the attitude (and I went to both Erasmus and PA in my day, so ex-New Yorker myself, and I loathed the attitude then, too).

And substitute any university you like for Yale - in fact, thinking about it, I don't think any of the reviewers I'm talking about are Elis.