Rendell explains it all — or does she?

Marianne McDonald — no slouch in the crime writing field herself — has a lengthy chat with one of the doyennes of the genre about her newest book (written as Barbara Vine) her reluctance to get personal, and how obsessive tendencies crept into her daily life and routine:

[S]he is resigned to the fact that her life is criss-crossed by phobias. These

seems to be the legacy of her Swedish mother, Ebba, who fell ill with

multiple sclerosis that went undiagnosed for years. She and Rendell’s

father, Arthur Grasemann (they were both school teachers based in east

London), had a terrible marriage, continually shrieking at each other,

giving each other the silent treatment and threatening to leave. A

sensitive only child, Rendell seems to have found the atmosphere

terrifying. In self-defence she created an inner voice that described

what was going on as if it was a story, and so her writing began. But

the fear remained, streaming out in her terror of being late, her need

to keep busy, and her obsession with routine. She often says that she

doesn’t think any families are ever happy and that the world is an

amoral place.

I ask her if she has become more flexible about time as she has grown older.

‘Certainly
not!’ she exclaims with asperity. ‘If anything, it gets worse. I
suppose that would be a reason to have therapy but I don’t want to
waste time – time!’ – she lets out a faint giggle – ‘sitting with
somebody who talks with me about being unpunctual. I know about all
that. I know it’s unnecessary and pointless. I’m still like it.’

Had she never had therapy? ‘I wouldn’t do that!’

Why not?

‘Well,
I used to feel it might take away my ability to write. These days I’m
quite content, you know, with everything. I am neurotic, but I live
with it. I think most people are, anyway.’

For all that Rendell keeps things very close to the vest, she does toss off some amusing comments like this at the end:

The photographer has arrived, and like the others
before me, I have got no further with those unanswered questions – why
she didn’t have more children, what the crisis was in her marriage,
what form the ‘seething emotions’ she refers to have taken. Like her
books, she guards a central mystery. But it doesn’t stop her being
really rather fun.

‘Well,’ she remarks with a hint
of conspiratorial amusement, heaving open the door to let me out, ‘as
you can probably imagine, I’m quite a connoisseur of interviews. And
that one was almost enjoyable.’

But perhaps that’s how it’s supposed to be, that the woman known for her complex mysteries is one herself.