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Print Reviewed by Alison Andrews 13 Steps Down. By Ruth Rendell. Crown, 2004. 340 pp. Mix Cellini is an exercise-equipment repairman who is obsessed with two things: a beautiful model and an infamous serial killer who was hanged 50 years ago. In the world of Ruth Rendell, what follows can’t be good—except that it does make compelling reading. Rendell, along with P.D. James (to whom this book is dedicated), is one of Britain’s grande dames of crime fiction. She is also the author of the Inspector Wexford mysteries and several creepier novels written under the name of Barbara Vine. Rendell knows how to capture her readers’ imaginations from the opening page and never let go. Obsessions and Delusions We meet Mix Cellini as he visits the former home of Reggie Christie, a serial killer who posed as an abortionist in order to lure his victims into his trap. Mix thinks of himself as an amateur criminologist; he has read books and watched movies about his subject rather than imagining himself as a killer. His more pressing obsession is with Nerissa Nash, a rising young model who can, Mix believes, elevate him into the world of fame he so desires to enter. Once Mix finds out Nerissa’s daily routine, he begins stalking her in earnest, convinced that once she notices him, they will fall in love and all his dreams will come true. Like most dreamers, Mix ignores what the reader discerns from Rendell’s skillful narration: that there is no chance for him to win Nerissa’s heart, since he is stuck in a dead-end job and losing what looks he once had by his habit of consuming junk food and alcohol. Awfully Fond Mix isn’t the only character in 13 Steps Down who lives in a fantasy world. His landlady, elderly Gwendolen Chaucer, has interred herself in her once-grand house since her father died. She refuses to do housework or cook for herself, preferring instead to read classic novels and to fantasize about the relationship she almost had with the young doctor who attended her mother during her last illness. Dr. Stephen Reeves once said he was “awfully fond” of Gwendolen, and from this innocent remark and her idea of romance derived from Victorian novels, she has concocted a passionate but thwarted love, “the most important event of her life.” When she learns from an obituary that Dr. Reeves’ wife has died, Gwendolen decides to write to him. The delusions Gwendolen and Mix have wrapped themselves in lead inexorably to tragedy. They are fellow solipsists who barely recognize the existence of other human beings outside their own skins; the people they claim to love are mere cardboard cutouts the egotists have custom-designed to feed their desire for significance. Thanks to Rendell’s skill—she never beats us over the head with the irony, but feeds it to us a little at a time—we get to know Nerissa Nash and learn that she is an appealing person, not obsessed with herself at all, who barely corresponds with the idol Mix has created in his mind. That’s what makes the book so intense: we continually ask ourselves how divorced from reality Mix will become in his quest to gain Nerissa’s attention. Therefore, even though this book is not a murder mystery (we observe the murder directly), the psychological tension continues to build until the last page. The Myth of Homicidal Genius Even for a first-time Rendell reader, the author’s skill at portraying the banality of evil is undeniable. For Rendell, murderers are not cunning geniuses who manipulate their victims and the justice system with their superior intelligence. (In fact, the weakest part of the book is the inclusion of Reggie Christie, who never becomes quite real to us—understandably so, since he has been dead for so long. However, the serial-killer connection is tenuous at best and could have easily been left out of the plot.) Rendell shows that murderers are often people of less-than-average intelligence who lack the ability to empathize with other human beings (as opposed to living in a narcissistic fantasy world). When such people feel trapped and desperate, they may kill, first out of impulse, and then to cover their tracks. Rendell’s refusal to glamorize murderers, along with her amazing attention to psychological detail, is what sets this book apart from the typical crime novel. Ruth Rendell is more than a competent mystery novelist. Like every great writer, she looks into the human heart of darkness and confronts us with the evil (and good) she finds there. ninetyandnine.com © 2006, Alison Andrews ------ Alison Andrews lives near Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband and daughter. At any given moment, she's either reading a classic novel or singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” over and over...and over.
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