THE KEYS TO THE STREET - Book review

 

Ruth Rendell’s The Keys to the Street (1996) is yet another of her intriguing psychological suspense novels. This time she delves into the world of the street people, the dispossessed, the homeless.

The first lines of the book dwell on the iron spikes that surmount the gates of the London Park near the zoo. These – or similar – spikes are relevant later, when some murders occur: a couple of dossers are found impaled on them.

But this isn’t a detective story. The main character is Mary Jago, who works at the Irene Adler museum, which panders to fans of Sherlock Holmes. She has been cohabiting with Alistair, though now she fears him, as he has become controlling and prone to bouts of ill temper. Mary recently offered herself as a bone marrow donor and actually underwent the procedure, effectively saving a man’s life. Alistair is forcefully uncomfortable about this: ‘You need some sense shaking into you’ and shook her with a kind of frenzy (p52). So she plucks up the courage and decides to move out, and has found a temporary job of house-sitting for several months. There is also a dog left with the house – Gushi.

Mr Bean (no, not that one; see below) is a seventy-year-old dog walker and takes up to six at a time, twice daily, including Gushi. Previously, he’d been in the employ of a certain Maurice Clitheroe who was a deranged masochist. Since then, Bean is always on the lookout for scandal that might provide him with blackmail money, and has his sights on one dog-owning client, Mr Barker-Pryce, MP.

Mary and Leo Nash, the bone marrow recipient, meet and are attracted.

From time to time Mary sees a number of homeless in the park area. One of them is Roman Ashton – he’s reading Gogol’s Dead Souls when she first observes him. Roman suffered a tragic loss and sold up his house and lost himself in the streets. Despite not appearing or sounding like the usual street person, he gradually learns the ways of dossers, noting for example that ‘only another dosser sits on the seat where a dosser already is’ (p89).

Harvey Owen Bennett – known as Hob – is a damaged junkie who is willing to do anything to get a fix to relieve his ‘state’.

Another dosser is Pharaoh – real name Jimmy Clancy – whose coat is decorated with countless keys. Apparently he’s seeking ‘the keys of the Kingdom’ (p149). Mr Bean possesses a key to a private residents’ park.

The inner lives and varied past of these characters are examined by Rendell as we move through the novel, and there will be interconnections. Rendell appears knowledgeable about London’s labyrinthine streets, the habits of junkies, dog-walkers and the homeless. In addition, Rendell’s gift for description never fails to put the reader in the scene: ‘In the dark canal a full moon was reflected like a round white light under the water. Trees trailed thin branches across its surface as if to catch the moon in their net’ (p149).

Even when the twist occurs, there is no let-up for the reader. The pages have to be turned to find out what happens next.

An excellent read.

Editorial comment:

The choice of the name ‘Mr Bean’. I can’t understand why Rendell would opt for this since Rowan Atkinson had made his comical Mr Bean famous in 1990 and thereafter.