The Best Man to Die (1969)
Blurb:
My review:
An early Rendell which shows the birth of her social conscience. The milieu is very working-class (truck drivers), and the murderer is the only “U” character in the book. Like the Coles, her class-consciousness and social purpose make the murderer rather obvious. Still, there’s pleasure to be derived from her unerring eye for social details and unusual psychology, and from the pleasingly detailed and humdrum detection which shows how the murder of a blackmailing lorry driver is linked up with a fatal car crash. Perhaps the most disturbing thing is the violent ending, which shows the senseless brutality of the uneducated.