From Library Journal
Putting this title in the mystery collection may be slightly misleading since the killer's identity is revealed early on, but listeners will find the tale as addictive as any whodunit. Seventeen-year-old Liza reveals her life story, Sheherazade-like, to her lover: raised in near isolation by her mother in a remote place, she finds herself abruptly sent away when her mother is arrested for murder. More than one man has disappeared after threatening her mother's peaceful lifestyle, and Liza must learn to live with the legacy of murder. Narrator Lisanne Cole is excellent, and the attractive packaging will entice listeners, but the story suffers some in abridged form. Recommended if budget woes will not allow for purchase of an unabridged version (if and when it becomes available).
- Luana Ellis, Jamestown Community Coll. Lib., Olean, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A sheltered girl spins a tale of her involvement with her mother in a years-old series of killings--in this meditative Arabian Nights of murder-in-retrospect reminiscent of Rendell's Barbara Vine byline. Rendell's Scheherazade is Liza Beck, whose aptly named mother Eve, obsessively attached to Shrove House, the splendid, isolated estate in whose gatehouse she lives, has kept her from all contact with the outside world--no school, no TV--until nearly the time that Eve, about to be taken away by the police, sends her 16-year-old daughter away to the protection of an old London school friend. But Liza runs off instead to her lover Sean Holford, the new Shrove handyman, and spends a hundred nights telling him the story of how Eve came to commit murder--though the story begins ``when I was four...that's when she killed the first one.'' Gradually, like a distant shore in the mist, a byzantine logic comes into view. When her own mother, who's spent years caring for old Jonathan Tobias, the master of Shrove House, is led by his capricious promise to believe he'll leave it to her and then thwarted is by another caprice, Eve stays on as caretaker at young Jonathan's request, determined to entice him into marriage. Years pass, marked only by Jonathan's repeated withdrawal--and by Eve's disembodied homicidal reprisals against anyone who threatens her tenure at Shrove. Eve is finally less fascinating than she's supposed to be, but her daughter, who in her cleareyed innocence says proudly that ``there can't be many people who've read the whole of Virgil's Aeneid in the original and seen two people murdered by the time they're sixteen,'' is a masterly creation, touched equally with pathology and mercy. Trust Rendell to find new depths of terror in the idea of unschooled unsentimentality. And if this sedate, chilling family portrait isn't in the same class as A Judgment in Stone or Make Death Love Me, well, what is? -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
“A strong performance that should spoil the trains-and-planes readership rotten.” —The Independent“In a sea of slasher novels, Ruth Rendell’s The Crocodile Bird is an oasis of clean writing, clear thinking, and genuine insight that deserves the description ‘psychological thriller.’ ” —San Francisco Chronicle“Ruth Rendell excels in depicting the damaged life, the ruined soul whose fierce, elemental pain is refracted into the world as ritualistic, orderly, and even apparently calm behavior—behavior that ultimately turns deadly.” —Boston Sunday Globe
From the Publisher
A mother and a daughter live quietly in the rustic gatehouse of Shrove House, an isolated British estate. Their life seems perfectly ordinary except that daughter Liza has been kept isolated from the outside world for all of her sixteen years. And that he has seen her beautiful mother commit murder... more than once. Now, as the police come searching for a missing man, Liza's sheltered, strange world begins to fall apart. Piece by piece she will reveal her mother's tale of betrayal, desire, and obsession. Step-by-step we discover how much like mother, like daughter she is.
From the Inside Flap
a daughter live quietly in the rustic gatehouse of Shrove House, an isolated British estate. Their life seems perfectly ordinary except that daughter Liza has been kept isolated from the outside world for all of her sixteen years. And that he has seen her beautiful mother commit murder... more than once. Now, as the police come searching for a missing man, Liza's sheltered, strange world begins to fall apart. Piece by piece she will reveal her mother's tale of betrayal, desire, and obsession. Step-by-step we discover how much like mother, like daughter she is.
From the Back Cover
A mother and a daughter live quietly in the rustic gatehouse of Shrove House, an isolated British estate. Their life seems perfectly ordinary except that daughter Liza has been kept isolated from the outside world for all of her sixteen years. And that he has seen her beautiful mother commit murder... more than once. Now, as the police come searching for a missing man, Liza's sheltered, strange world begins to fall apart. Piece by piece she will reveal her mother's tale of betrayal, desire, and obsession. Step-by-step we discover how much like mother, like daughter she is.
About the Author
Edgar Award–winning author Ruth Rendell (b. 1930) has written more than seventy books and sold more than twenty million copies worldwide. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (London), she is the recipient of the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Crime Writers’ Association. Rendell’s award-winning novels include A Demon in My View (1976), A Dark-Adapted Eye (1987), and King Solomon’s Carpet (1991). Her popular crime stories featuring Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford were adapted into a long-running British television series (1987–2000) starring George Baker.
Ruth Rendell's latest psychological thriller presents a terrifying look into the relationship of a serial killer and her daughter. There is no "who done it" about this novel, you know right away who did it. As in many of Rendell's novels, the real question is why? Although the narration is very good and the characters voices distinguishable, too much is lost in the abridgment. The plot is clear, but little of the feeling and the mood remain. It is for these features that Rendell is often referred to as "the greatest mystery writer in the English-speaking world." Some texts cannot be cut, however expertly, without losing some essential core. E.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
