The Babes in the Wood is a
compelling mystery set in Britain featuring Ruth Rendell’s detective Chief
Inspector Wexford.  During a torrential downpour with floodwaters rising, two
teenagers and their babysitter go missing.  Giles Dade is 15 and his sister
Sophie is 13.  Their parents were away on a weekend trip to Paris and the
children were at home with their mother’s best friend, Joanna Troy.  When the
parents return home the house is empty and the mother concludes that her
children must have drowned, while the father dismisses her fear as hysteria. 
Wexford can easily tell that the marriage has its troubles, but he can’t be
sure if this is relevant to the children’s disappearance.  Divers search the
flooded streets but they don’t find any bodies, and even with a nationwide
appeal on television, no one has any information about the children or Joanna
Troy.  Wexford investigates further into the babysitter and starts to turn up
odd facts: she was a schoolteacher but gave up her job to run a translation
service through the Internet.  She is divorced and there are rumors that she
had an affair with the children’s father.  Wexford also discovers that Giles Dade
has a follower of a local religious cult that holds men to be morally superior
to women.  Gradually, piece-by-piece, Wexford uncovers the mystery and the
bizarre truth behind the appearance of normal town life. 

It is a complex story and with many
threads, but it is easy to follow since Wexford is a sympathetic lead
character.  He has his own family life and worries: the threat that his house
will be flooded by the ceaseless rain, and his disapproval of his daughter’s
unhappy relationship with her current lover.  Fortunately, he has his colleague
Mike Burden with whom he discusses the details, and that provides an
explanation of the different parts for the confused reader.  The children’s
mother is so neurotic and the father so angry and impatient that they are
one-dimensional characters, but they help anchor the story.  The grandparents
are even more enjoyable characters because they are so extreme.  Ultimately,
Wexford discovers significant psychopathology and the novel has a strong psychological
element, but there description of the characters is fairly superficial.  It
would, however, make an excellent PBS Mystery TV mini-series, if the production
could find a convincing way to portray the overflowing rivers of Britain. 

© 2004 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also
editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Fiction