A good read. A policeman is murdered almost on page 1. Three family members are murdered a few pages later. They're unconnected events of course. Or are they? It's the 3 murders however which occupy most of the book. The deceased are a woman, her husband, her daughter. Her granddaughter, though injured in the massacre, survives.

Several suspects, so little to go on. Inspector Wexford follows several false trails. The characters, even minor ones, are well drawn, and so when the murderer is revealed, on almost the last page, it's a real surprise.... but a believable one

( )

Wexford Proved Wrong?
Review of the Recorded Books audiobook edition (1994) narrated by Davina Porter, of the original hardcover from Hutchinson (UK) (January 1992)

'Kissing the gunner’s daughter is a dangerous business.’
‘That expression,’ Burden said. ‘What does it mean? Someone said it to me the other day, I can’t think who it was . . .’
‘It was me,’ said Vine.
‘What does it mean? It means being flogged. When they were going to flog a man in the Royal Navy they first tied him to a cannon on deck. Kissing the gunner’s daughter was therefore a dangerous enterprise.'

I won't bury the lede here, but will get right to it. At the end of the book Chief Inspector Wexford explains the solution of the main crime to his colleagues DI Mike Burden and Sergeant Vine as they are on their way to apprehend the culprits. Then they walk in on a situation which seems to completely contradict the explanation which Wexford had just provided. And the book stops right there, leaving the reader hanging at the very end. So you have to write your own ending. Was Wexford wrong and the actual culprits are who they walked in on? Or was Wexford correct, but there is an additional twist which he didn't foresee? In any case, an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert™ tag is required, or at the very least an Ambiguous Ending Alert™.

See cover at https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/...
The front cover of the original Hutchinson (UK) 1992 hardcover. Image sourced from Goodreads.

Up until that conclusion, this had been quite an excellent Wexford mystery. The investigation involved quite a number of suspects and even the subplot with Wexford's daughter Sheila was interesting & sometimes humorous this time, instead of tedious. Sheila has fallen in love with a pretentious contemporary novelist and is even set to abandon her acting career for him. Wexford is in turns offended and often enraged by the arrogance and antics of the writer and despairs for his future relationship with Sheila. That part of the book did have a satisfactory conclusion at least.

This was Wexford #15 in the series of 24 novels. I had previously skipped over #15 to #18 as they were proving difficult to source. No convenient Kindle eBooks exist and the Toronto Public Library online system was struck down in October 2023 (which is still ongoing) by a ransomware attack (rumoured to be Russian based) which prevents you from locating and placing books on hold throughout the system (short of physically going around Toronto to each branch personally and searching the shelves by hand). I've decided to complete my Wexford/Rendell binge by sourcing the audiobooks which are not ideal as I am also trying to spot Wexford's personal Laws and Rules along the way. Listening on audio might cause me to miss them.

On the Berengaria Ease of Solving Scale® I found this to be a fairly difficult solve, an 8 out of 10, which was further complicated by the ending which undermined the solution. I did suspect one aspect of the solution, but that may have been due to a vague memory from 30 years ago, as I had previously read Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (1993) and that paperback carried over when I rolled my book database into Goodreads back in 2010.

The narration by Davina Porter was excellent in all voices in this edition. I sourced this through the free Audible Plus library. There is an additional audiobook edition Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (Audible Studios 2009) narrated by Robin Bailey which is currently not free.

Wexford's Laws
There were no Wexford's Laws mentioned in this book. Wexford's Laws are quirky thoughts or observations that Wexford makes. The previous book The Veiled One (Wexford #14, 1988) contained Wexford's Third Law.

Trivia and Links
Kissing the Gunner's Daughter was adapted for television as part of the Ruth Rendell / Inspector Wexford Mysteries TV series (1987-2000) as Season 6 Episodes 8 to 11 in 1992 with actor George Baker as Inspector Wexford. You can watch the entire episode on YouTube here. NOTE: The TV adaptation "fixes" the confusing ending of the novel. ( )

El asesinato de un policía en el atraco de un banco y la muerte violenta de tres miembros de una acaudalada familia en su mansión señorial, dos casos en apariencia inconexos, perturban la monótona quietud de una pequeña ciudad de provincias y son el punto de partida de Un beso para mi asesino, de Ruth Rendell.

Bei der Untersuchung des Mordes an einer sozialitären Familie ist Inspektor Wexford gezwungen, sich seinen eigenen tiefsten Gefühlen zu stellen. Er wird als "eine der dunkelsten und subtilsten Charakterstudien Rendells" (SF-Chronik) bezeichnet.

3.5 Stars This book was just slow for me for some reason. I had a hard time concentrating. It was just boring. Im not sure why?? ( )