The Girl Next Door

Ruth Rendell has been a prolific and well-respected writer--considered to be one of the grande dames of British mystery writers. But I am getting more hardened about not reading things that do not engage me, and this book did not.  Probably says more about me than about the book. We know almost from the beginning of the book who the skeletal hands in the buried biscuit tin belonged to and who put them there. But by the time they are discovered, the murderer has lived a long and well-off life and now resides peacefully in a luxurious retirement community. Strike one against the story line IMO. But more damning from my perspective is that I did not come to care about or empathize with any of the characters in the first 80+ pages of the book, nor could I imagine this changing significantly. Hence, I let it go without finishing. The most extensive review and summary of story line I found were in the Washington Post.