Talking to strange men

by Ruth Rendell

Hardcover, 1987

Status

Available

Publication

New York : Pantheon Books, c1987.

Description

"Safe houses and secret message drops, double crosses and defections - it sounds like the stuff of sophisticated espionage, but the agents are only schoolboys engaged in harmless play. But John Creevey doesn't know this. To him, the messages he decodes with painstaking care are the communications of dangerous and evil men, and as he comes face to face with the fact of his beloved wife Jennifer's defection, he begins to see a way to get back at the man she left him for. And soon the schoolboys are playing more than just a game.

Media reviews

Washington Post
A writer who like Rendell refuses to accept the usual limits of the crime story is bound to miss the bull's eye sometimes, and Talking to Strange Men is no more than an outer, even though the main theme is handled with typical assurance... The idea is ingenious, but even Rendell's skill cannot
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make the mock spying activities seem plausible, so that the story's would-be tragic finale seems merely confected. It may be that at the moment Ruth Rendell is writing too much-an average of two books a year plus short stories is one that nobody except Simenon has maintained for long without some loss of quality.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member wirkman
The first time I read this book, I was "blown away"; on second reading, however, the tale lacked the impact. Why? I suspect that I willingly gave myself to the author, not judging prose or structure. The second time I read to learn, with a critical eye. That eye killed the novel. Alas.
LibraryThing member JohnnyForeign
This is the first Ruth Rendell I've read and I really enjoyed it. The plot is very clever and I really liked how the author managed to interweave two apparently separate stories. The characterization was also very well done. It's always great to find an author who combines suspense and mystery with
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compelling characterizations. There are many crime/mystery writers who are good at plotting and setting up puzzles, but are short on just about every other literary skill. Rendell is the whole package. I will definitely read some more of her works.
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LibraryThing member jayne_charles
I read the first chapter or so about five times before I fully understood what was going on. This is certainly a highly original idea - an abandoned husband manages to infiltrate the coded messages being sent between a group of boys playing a spy-game. Except it's a game they take very seriously
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indeed. I think that's it anyway. I found the spy ring side of things rather difficult to follow, and I would no doubt make a lousy spy. The adult characters were excellent, though. Top marks for originality, obscure character names and ideas for games the kids could play in the holidays!
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LibraryThing member Bookmarque
It would have worked better if it had been confined to a short story. That's what this book needed - confinement. So much of it is taken up by very uninteresting goings on that when the end finally approaches the reader sighs with relief. John is a boring little man with no life and so of course
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these coded messages become an obsession; he's got nothing else to do. All of his scenes are either at his boring job at a garden center, him trying to crack the code or alternately pining for Jennifer or drinking with Mark who can only talk about himself. John loathes himself for putting up with him, but doesn't have enough vertebral column to tell him off. The dark, twisted psyche that Rendell is so good at depicting is absent and makes for dull reading.

The whole spy thing that John takes so seriously being actually a bunch of kids is pretty funny in an ironic sort of way. The seriousness with which they take the whole enterprise is fun at first; the coded messages, the secrecy, the rivalry, moles, defectors and double-agents. After a while though it's boring and essentially meaningless because there is no intent to harm in anything they do. Even when John slips in his message about Peter Moran, the kids' attention is benign which makes the ending pretty tame even though Moran ends up dead. John didn't intend for him to be harmed and is barely aware of his death before the end of the book. Of course he doesn't get what he wants and seeing Jennifer and Mark together pushes him into (of course, what else can we expect from this loser?) a failed suicide attempt.

I've always thought early Rendell was the best, but this one was a miss. Not enough evil, tension or action to work well as a novel. I've always admired her subtlety, but this one isn't subtle, it's boring.
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LibraryThing member picardyrose
What an ending!

Language

Barcode

1715
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