Rendell's psychological portraits of her sundry characters do not fail to amuse and entertain. She's a wizard. ( )

Ok, I guess I "Five Star" anything I get through that I like. Sorry about that. This is an OK book, not an Amazing book. But it is worth a read and does keep you thinking after you put the book down, which is why it is worthy of the Five Star rating.

Tiger Lily's orchids are marijuana plants!!! Of course, nothing of import is properly named is book so we must go back to the beginning. I thought the book was about the spoiled young man having the affair. Then I thought it was about everyone in Lichfield House. It is, but it keep in mind it is told with the limitations of Duncan, the bored man across the building. When the reader goes over the story again with this view in mind it changes things. Very good. ( )

I'm still not entirely sure what it is about Rendell's writing that is so appealing. Undoubtedly she writes well. She also has interesting characters and plot lines but none of these elements by themselves is remarkable or exceptional. Yet mix them together and her books are interesting and perhaps that's her gift. ( )

Finished Sept 14, 2016. Great writing but oddly structured book. Observational kitchen sink drama with a murder mystery tacked on at the end.

I think the jacket blurb does this a disservice, it presents the story as something other than what it is. It is an ensemble piece, with the focus being a block of 6 flats in reasonably well off London. The occupants are a varied lot, along with the caretaker & his wife, Duncan over the road and the house next to his. this is where the Tigerlily of the title resides, but she is a barely visible presence. It starts with the life of Stuart Font, a curiously unlikable character who is all style and no substance. He's living off an inheritance and is taking a year out, with no clear plan of what to do, apart from gaze narcistically in the mirrors and continue his affair with Claudia. She's married (one suspects older) and her husband's not too impressed. He starts the book by planning a flat warming party, to which the residents and neighbours are invited. This is the piece that gets them all together, what happens sets up the murder with likely suspects, but it's not the climax of the piece.

The thing I liked about this was the way that it's not one story, it's a series of intermingled stories. Very often you hear one person's internal monologue on viewing a situation, followed by the person they've been watching's thoughts on the subject. It presnets a picture of how people leap to conclusions about a situation, and can be wildly wrong. The relationship between Tigerlily and the older man is mentioned by at least 2 characters, neither of which get the true state of affairs. There are clues to the true state of affairs, but they don;t all necessarily fall into place until later.

There are a multitude of sins in here, theft, drink, drugs, violence, murder, domestic violence, pedophilia. All of which get discussed and gone over by the neighbours over and again. It's a psychological portrait of a neighbourhood, how we interact, why we do or don;t do certain things and what the consequences of that might be, for ourselves and others. ( )