End in Tears by Ruth Rendell

End in Tears is an Inspector Wexford mystery. If you've been reading Ruth Rendell's mysteries, you'll likely remember Inspector Wexford from previous outings. Wexford is a thoughtful detective and family man. His ruminations often drift back and forth between his concerns for the case at hand and concerns about his family.

In this outing, Wexford and crew are looking for the murderer of an 18 year old girl/woman. Amber (the victim) was returning home from nightclubbing when she was bludgeoned within a block from her home. Amber's death left a desolated father, an indifferent step-mother, and a year-old-child, Brand. Before too long, the murder squad discovers that Amber was the probable intended victim of a previous murder attempt, when someone chucked a cement block over the side of an overpass, striking the car in front of Amber's car--a car of the same make and only slightly different color.

The case is complicated by several parallel plots. One involves some sort of baby scam, and the murder squad is uncertain as to whether the two crimes are linked. In another plotline, two of the squad members, Hannah and Bal are testing the waters of a possible romance. Yet another plotline involves Wexford's daughter Sylvia, who is pregnant, separated/divorced from her husband (and the father of the child), and planning on giving the child to her ex to raise with his new girlfriend/future-wife Naomi. Naomi is infertile and Sylvia is feeling guilty for having left her husband without much of a reason. Sylvia's situation occupies Wexford's thoughts and causes something of a rift between him and his wife.

This is not one of my favorite Ruth Rendell or Wexford mysteries, although I've never liked her Wexford mysteries as well as her standalone mysteries and Barbara Vine books. Nevertheless, the writing is excellent, as always, and the story is involving, even if I did begin to think the detectives would never catch on the fairly obvious (to me anyway) scam. The means by which Wexford was finally illuminated was the only really clumsy bit in the book.

If you haven't read a Wexford mystery before, don't start with this one. It isn't necessary to read them exactly in order, although it couldn't hurt, but it would help to start earlier in the series.