Rating: 
Summary: Gripping
Review: Jerry Leach makes his living victimizing women. A true sociopath, he leads them on, sucks them dry and then leaves them. At the beginning of the novel, he is married to Zillah, engaged to Fiona, and has just recently left Minty. Minty is not too well balanced to begin with, she seems to have some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. When Jock (as she knows him)leaves her, taking her life savings, she begins to see and hear ghosts. Jock is among these, he sent her a letter saying that he had died in a train crash. He also sent one to his wife, who takes the opportunity to remarry, to a gay MP in need of a cover. In return, she gets the security that she has always wanted for herself and her two children. Minty sees what she thinks is Jock's ghost in a movie theater one night and stabs him to death. Fiona is heartbroken, and inadvertantly steers the police in her neighbor's direction. Matthew is a writer who suffers from anorexia and writes a column and hosts a TV show on the subject. His wife Michelle is a morbidly obese woman, obsessed with bringing her husband back to health. They both saw Jeff(the name he gave himself here) for what he was and disliked him. Natalie, another old flame of Jeff's, is a journalist who sees this all as the story that will bring her fame. The author deftly intertwines all of these women and their stories. It is amazing just how much damage one cad can cause. He seems to pick damaged people and preys on their weaknesses, and there are a great many to be found her. Obsessive-compulsives, codependents, anorectics, schizophrenia, sociopaths, it seems to be a veritable abnormal psych textbook. I had a hard time putting this one down to even eat or sleep. Facinating.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not her best
Review: Like most other Ruth Rendell books this is an enjoyable read with a complex plot and entertaining characters, but I only give it four stars, because it was ultimately disappointing - there are no last minute surprises, all the events that take place, and the ways the characters lives will intersect can be easily predicted. There also were a few plot elements I found quite unbelievable - for example why on earth would a rich gay Tory MP marry a working class single mother like Zillah? Surely with all his money he could find a far more suitable person to take part in a marriage of convenience. Also I liked the character Minty at first but by the end of the novel she reminded me too much of Dora from 'The Killing Doll'. I would recommend the novel to anyone who likes a good read, but would warn fans of suspense and mystery not to expect too much - this has none of the plot twists and turns of her earlier Barbara Vine books.
Rating: 
Summary: "Go Away!" she hissed. Wish I'd taken heed...
Review: Minty should have taken her knife to this manuscript. At least half should have been cut. "A&E&PE" is a book both wandering and repetitious.
Over the course of this novel, the main character takes almost sixteen million baths. I counted! There's also long lists of meals prepared, detailed fashion descriptions of eighty thousand outfits, and in-depth cinema visit scenes for every film that appeared around the year 2000.
Pinch me?
No.
Pinch off half the chapters and there's be enough room for the amount of plot and character invested here. On second thought, pinch off half the characters too: there's little that's interesting or sympathetic to several of them, and their stories' impact on the main plot is tangential. At best.
In fairness: I was expecting a mystery. Perhaps I'm just disappointed that there was very little crime in this novel, no investigation (at all), and no doubt as to what the conclusion would hold. There's never a moment when "it all comes together," no long-awaited twist that would make the whole read worthwhile. Instead of surprises we have bath after bath after bath and a lot of weeping into hankies over failed relationships.
Two stars out of five.
Rating:
Summary: Redemption for Rendell after Grasshopper
Review: Nearly all of the reviews of Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, serve the prospective reader well in outlining the plot of this typically compelling psychological novel by Ruth Rendell. I was frankly concerned that perhaps Ms. Rendell had run out of steam after reading Grasshopper, a novel that I found disappointing and not up to her usual exemplary standards. Now we have "Minty", Araminta Knox, another in a long line of Rendell's lost souls who become fascinating people with the strokes of her pen, people who would otherwise, in the real world, be invisible or avoided and mostly misunderstood. Poor Minty, dumped by an uncaring mother on a woman friend who was too decent to send her into care. Minty is also blessed with very few qualities that would ensure a happier future. She is pale, plain, thin, dim, self-centered, and possessed of a highly self-limiting obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. In addition to these unfortunate legacies, Minty is now beginning to hear voices and see ghosts. How Ruth Rendell can take these blighted people, weave the most rewarding stories around their bleak lives, and leave us wanting more is pure genius. A person who suffers from an obsessive-compulsive disorder such hoarding, or absurd cleanliness is not just a lovable eccentric with a few quirks. Inevitably, their obsessions drive people away as the sufferer goes on, except in few cases, untreated. Personality and Obsessive-Compulsive disorders are very serious conditions and Minty's unfortunate lack of mental health and treatment are the norm in our world. It takes a brilliant writer to be able to use such misery as the foundation for a most enjoyable and wonderfully plotted novel. It is to Ms. Rendell's credit that she has been plying us with at least three genres of fiction throughout her career, very ably and without becoming unpleasantly formulaic.
Rating:
Summary: Wake Me When It's Over
Review: Occasionally throughout the years I've enjoyed reading a good Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine mystery-thriller. Not so this time. I had to force myself to finish the last 120-plus pages. Whatever mild interest Rendell aroused at the beginning of the book evaporated when the story's lynchpin Jeff (Jock) was removed. After it became apparent to the reader how the characters and their lives intersected, the story line became a rather tasteless pudding indeed. The characters were truly one dimensional cardboard cutouts defined soley by their emotional and psychological aberrations. Minty, an OCD paranoid schizophrenic aroused not a ounce of sympathy. I found the parts about Michelle, the emotionally vulerable easily wounded binge eater and her equally off-putting saccharine, anorexic husband hard to take, even in small doses. Jeff(Jock) the womanizing sociopath at least ignited a small bit of fire before he burned out fairly early on. Creating the stereotype narcissistic gay MP was beneath the talent of Rendell. As were all the uncharming, off-putting characters in this inadequate "mystery". Psychological thriller? Not by any stretch of Rendell's imagination... or yours.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting Portrait of Madness
Review: Ruth Rendell excels in her ability to describe-and shade-the various forms of madness as well as mental illness.
"Adam and Eve and Pinch Me" tells the tale of "Jock Lewis"-also known by several other aliases-who charms various women into believing he is their one and only. And he does this all at the same time. His victims include Fiona, a hardworking merchant banker; Natalie, a sharp journalist; Zillah, the mother of his two children and the only one who is totally on to him (and also his legal wife); and most memorably, Minty, an obsessive compulsive woman who works in a dry cleaning store. Various other sharply drawn characters surround the main ones including Fiona's married neighbors, an anorexic man and his obese wife. The book focuses on the disappearance-and reappearance-of Jock and his subsequent murder. In many ways, despite his ne'er to do ways, he seems the most stable individual in the entire book. Much of "Adam and Eve and Pinch Me" is spent on the impact of his behavior on those around him and the choices these individuals are forced to make (Zillah, for instance, enters into a bigamous marriage with a gay politician to support her children.) I recommend this book for those individuals who are fans of Rendell's and the English mystery genre. I caution readers that this is not your typical "Who dunnit?"--in many ways it is a "Why did he or she do it and who else could have?"
Rating:
Summary: Another look at madness
Review: Ruth Rendell has always tackled madness with remarkable skill, and in Adam and Eve and Pinch Me she brings us in close to Minty, a young woman suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder and being pushed closer and closer to the edge by voices in her head and hallucinations which at times appear as real to her as the people around her. Minty is not the only character in this book. There is also Jock, or Jeff, or Jerry Leach, depending on whom you ask, a rather charming young man who befriends women, only to disappear with their money. He has befriended Minty, only to desert her by pretending to get himself killed in a train wreck. Before that, he has befriended, and in one case married, a whole string of other women, several of whom find their way into this book, along with their own sets of problems. But the story belongs to Minty. It begins and ends with her, and with the horrible but inevitable acts she commits while battling her hallucinations. She knows Jeff is dead, but his ghost won't leave her alone and she's desperate. She knows she must get rid of him ... and she does. Adam and Eve and Pinch Me did not blow me away. In fact, there were times when it did not seem like Rendell's writing. Many of her characters came across more like caricatures than real people, especially Matthew and his wife. I did not find myself growing especially attached to any of the bizarre parade marching through these pages. I did, however, read the book all the way through, something that doesn't happen so much now that I've gotten more fussy, and, even if I did find disbelief hard to suspend at times, I was never bored. Rendell is certainly a master at her craft, and while Adam and Eve and Pinch Me is not her best work, it is still an excellent read.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Tale
Review: Ruth Rendell has earned several Edgar awards including a Grand Master Award for the crafting of brilliant mysteries. In "Adam and Eve and Pinch Me", she is again in top form. However, this is not really a mystery. You are told who commits the murder. This is rather a romp through a world of madness, illusion and deceit. The suspense is created by watching and waiting for the police to discover the killer. The allure of the story lies in the actions of the multidimensional characters that Rendell has created. Each character has some secrete hidden away waiting to be discovered.
The story revolves around a wonderfully charming, devastatingly handsome and amoral conman Jock also known as Jerry Leach or Jeff Leigh. The trouble all starts when Jock's obsessive-compulsive girlfriend, Minty, thinks he is killed in a train crash. She becomes certain that his ghost is following her around and is determined to rid herself of the apparition. However, Jock isn't dead but very much alive. He staged his death to move on to another unsuspecting lady, a successful banker. His only legal wife knows that he is really alive but she sees this false death as a chance for her to marry a wealthy conservative member of Parliament, who is also hiding a secrete that could ruin his political career. The story begins to build toward its climax when Jock is found stabbed to death in a cinema. As his death is discovered and the hunt for the killer begins, Jack's lies unravel exposing not only his secrets but also those of the people around him. These discovered truths will destroy some lives, but it will rebuild others. I enjoyed this book tremendously and I recommend it highly. Judith Woolcock Colombo: Author of The Fablesinger & Night Crimes
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous Conundrum
Review: Ruth Rendell has produced another masterpiece. The main characters are three women who are all victims of a cad. He is married to one and engaged to the other two at various points in the novel. The lives of the three women, and those of their friends and neighbors in London, entwine and tangle through numerous plots and subplots. The bad guy gets his comeuppance in a most unexpected way, and in the end two of the women find a measure of peace, with the third becoming the last and saddest victim of all.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous Conundrum
Review: Ruth Rendell has produced another masterpiece. The main characters are three women who are all victims of a cad. He is married to one and engaged to the other two at various points in the novel. The lives of the three women, and those of their friends and neighbors in London, entwine and tangle through numerous plots and subplots. The bad guy gets his comeuppance in a most unexpected way, and in the end two of the women find a measure of peace, with the third becoming the last and saddest victim of all.
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