Although most of the eleven stories in Ruth Rendell's new collection [The Fallen Curtain] have a crime as their subject, its detection is not the object in any of them. Instead she sets out to create a mood—ranging from the domestic to the mildly macabre—and then suddenly, in the last few pages, whisks away the veil to reveal a situation which startles the reader as much as the characters. The method could become mechanical, but it is never so here: each story has its own individual and different jolt. The best are "A Bad Heart", which works the method in reverse, and "The Vinegar Mother", a child's-eye view of adult intrigue.
T. J. Binyon, "Criminal Proceedings," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1976; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 3896, November 12, 1976, p. 1437.∗
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