King Solomon's Carpet
King Solomon's Carpet is a 1991 novel that follows the motives and relationships behind a crime while steadily building tension.
Work Information
The clearer the outline of the case becomes, the more complicated the characters' relationships grow.
King Solomon's Carpet layers clues and shifting emotions so the reader follows not only the truth of the case but also the relationships around it. As the story moves forward, the tension outside the investigation comes into view.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Published
- 2009-05-07
- Pages
- 368 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.9 x 2.2 x 19.8 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780141040431
- ISBN-10
- 0141040432
- Price
- 907 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Mystery & Thrillers/Mystery
King Solomon's Carpet is a prize-winning crime classic from bestselling author Barbara Vine Winner of the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award 'The tension grows ... an overwhelming sense of foreboding ... when the unravelling takes place, it is brilliantly unexpected and original' The Times Jarvis Stringer lives in a crumbling schoolhouse overlooking a tube line, compiling his obsessive, secret history of London's Underground. His presence and his strange house draw a band of misfits into his orbit: young Alice, who has run away from her husband and baby; Tom, the busker who rescues her; truant Jasper who gets his kicks on the tube; and mysterious Axel, whose dark secret later casts a shadow over all of their lives. Dispossessed and outcast, those who come to inhabit Jarvis's schoolhouse are gradually brought closer together in violent and unforeseen ways by London's forbidding and dangerous Undergound . . . 'I longed to know what would happen next. Towards the end the tension fairly gets you by the throat' Sunday Express 'Vine arouses a genuine fear that all that is normal is in danger of being lost' Sunday Times King Solomon's Carpet is a modern masterpiece of the crime genre and will leave you gripped from the first page to the last. If you enjoy the novels of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow, you will love this book. Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye ; The House of Stairs ; Gallowglass ; Asta's Book ; No Night Is Too Long ; In the Time of His Prosperity ; The Brimstone Wedding ; The Chimney Sweeper's Boy ; Grasshopper ; The Blood Doctor ; The Minotaur ; The Birthday Present and The Child's Child .
Barbara Vine was the pen-name of Ruth Rendell , and Viking published all of her books under that name. Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, with worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, and regular Sunday Times bestsellers. Rendell won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for 1976's best crime novel with A Demon in My View, a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986, and the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer. Ruth Rendell died in May 2015.
Reviews
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Great read
Barbara Vine is so good at showing the imperfections of being human. End was disturbing but a pretty decent read
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Not exactly a thriller but I really liked it
An old school situated in close proximity to the London Underground is the setting for the majority of this story. The school is owned by a man engaged in writing a book about the history of the underground systems of the world. For income, he rents rooms to a host of odd tenets, each with their own curious story. "Psychological Thriller" is a bit of an overstated description of this book. While each of the characters has some peculiarity, and the storyline includes some puzzling elements, there's only about 20 pages of anything truly resembling thriller status. All in all though, I really liked this book. There are many instances of artistic prose and the characters and their relationships are multi-dimensional and memorable. I also enjoyed the pages of underground history woven throughout the story. It's always fun to learn new things!
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An unusual crime novel with the London Underground as a main character
This was actually my second time reading this book. The first was back in the 1990s. Reading it again took me back to then. I enjoyed reading it both times (to be honest, any book in which the Underground features a lot will appeal to me). We have a collection of characters that are generally unhappy with what life has thrown them, except perhaps Jarvis and the children. So we have a young, new mother who, desperate to pursue her musical career abandons her baby; a hopelessly romantic and idealistic young man and a man driven insane by the death of his sister on a Underground train. Also, of course, the wonderful London Underground, around the late 80's and early 90's. Jarvis, an engineer who owns the old school at which the characters live is writing a book about the Underground, and kind of acts as a voice for it in the story. The story is quite slowly paced, but this works well. It is not a detective story, and I think the reader is encouraged to discern the motivations of the characters themselves. I can recommend this book.
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Wonderful atmospherics
I'm not sure how I came to miss this Barbara Vine before - but what a lovely find on Kindle ! One comes to expect an intricate, pyschologically charged read from Ruth Rendell's alter ego and KSC is one of the best. The title suggests not only the magic of transport to faraway places, but also references the close weaving of threads and colours, all of which are evident to some degree or other in this book. The faraway places might only be those reached on the Tube, but somehow are invested with glamour and made me instantly want to go back to London, just to travel on all those lines and maybe to glimpse those 'ghost stations' ( who knew ? !) One of the pleasure sof reading Barbara Vine for me is the way she has her characters look and dress, and how they gather about them particular accoutrements that say who they are . Axel's coat, Alice's beauty , Cecelia's brooch, Jasper's eyes, none of these are incidental. I won't say more for fear of spoilers , I hate those as much as am bored by 'reviews' that simply list the facts of a book. Read and enjoy KSC and don't forget that endings are in the beginnings .......
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An intuiging plot...
This novel has a slightly unusual structure, in that it merges facts about the London Underground with a story in which the Tube could be said to be a protagonist. As is usual with Ruth Rendell, the story has quite a few strange, eccentric and menacing characters. She is a master at creating suspense. I read this while commuting to and from work, and was often annoyed when I reached my stop! The only reason I gave this 4 stars is that so few of the characters are sympathetic-with the exception of 'trainspotter'Jarvis. and the two elderly friends-Cecelia and Daphne- the others are so self absorbed and/or controlling that one loses any sympathy for them..As always, Ms.Rendell's social observations are unsparing in portraying casual neglect and indifference. Definitely, a very good read!
Related Literary Awards
- CWA KAA Gold Dagger Edition 37 (1991) ・Winner