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Some Lie And Some Die
Arrow, London, 1974
dedication:
To my son, Simon Rendell, who goes to festivals, and my cousin, Michael Richards, who wrote the song, this book is dedicated with love and gratitude
The blurb on the back:
For a while the pop festival at 'Sundays' went well. The sun shone, the groups played and everyone - except a few angry neighbours - seemed to enjoy themselves. 'The best woman crime writer since Sayers, Christie, Allingham and Marsh' - Edmund Crispin, Sunday Times Well, you know Ruth Rendell, and you either like her stuff or you don't. Personally I can live without it, but I guess you've got to accept that she's good at what she does, and this one - being the kind of thing she does - is no exception. A rock festival hits a small village in the early-1970s and inevitably ends in murder. There are the usual clumsy attempts to describe music that doesn't exist and that the writer doesn't like very much, but it's not too embarrassing and, since the emphasis is on the disruption of normal life, it all hangs together. Typically of the casual racism of the period, a male black character is described as 'a magnificent tall Negro'. Can you imagine a white man being described as having a 'magnificent' appearance? Of course not. An animal, perhaps, but not a white man. It's a slave-trader's term. ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 2/5 HIPNESS QUOTIENT: 1/5 home |