TO ORDER All titles may not be immediately available. . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT REVIEWS: 9/19/97: Guide Dennis Cooper Fiction 9/18/97: It's a Slippery Slope Spalding Gray Nonfiction 9/17/97: News of the Spirit Lee Smith Fiction 9/16/97: Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma Michael Peppiat Nonfiction 9/15/97: The Witch of Exmoor Margaret Drabble Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . SEARCH BOOK ARCHIVES BY: title of book author publisher reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . ALSO IN SALON: The Salon Classics Book Group Fiction victim Erica Jong's tribute to Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT BOOK FEATURES

r o a d R a g e + BY RUTH RENDELL + CROWN + FICTION + 352 PAGES BY RACHEL PASTAN | british murder mysteries have always explored the culture of a particular milieu -- an English country house, an advertising agency, a nuclear power station. But lately they have taken on broader social and political issues. Done poorly, this seems little more than a gimmick. But done well, as in Ruth Rendell's latest Inspector Wexford novel, "Road Rage," it permits the author an ampler and richer canvas. As "Road Rage" opens, Wexford is taking a final walk through the woodland of his childhood before the bulldozers knock it down to make way for a new highway bypass. The construction project has unleashed a wave of protest from respectable townspeople and environmental extremists alike. Before long a terrorist group gets into the act, seizing five hostages, among them Dora Wexford, Inspector Wexford's wife. Over the years we've observed Wexford's difficult and evolving relationships with his daughters, but his wife has remained more in the background, a faithful, resourceful, independent-minded woman whom Wexford loves but seems to take for granted -- a kind of modern-day, British Madame Maigret. The action of "Road Rage" changes all that. Of course a police station is a kind of family too, and we see how Wexford's staff is able to comfort him in a way his daughters cannot. Rendell deftly portrays Wexford as a man caught between his real, deep love for his family and the near-total identification with his job that makes him more comfortable at work than at home. "Road Rage" is as much a psychological portrait of Wexford as it is a compelling mystery story. But the mystery part is pretty terrific too. Rendell introduces a number of interesting elements -- a disreputable taxi company whose offices are hijacked the same day the hostages disappear; the self-styled King of the Wood in his long, sand-colored cloak; a theater director putting on a play called "Extinction" -- and weaves them together as skillfully as any contemporary mystery writer. I have a couple of loose-end quibbles about the ending, but they are dwarfed by the essential coherence and complexity of the book, and by how seriously Rendell takes her responsibility as a novelist, not just as a practitioner of a genre. Mystery novels offer a reliable and satisfying structure, much the way a sonnet does. Even a mediocre mystery can make us want to keep reading, but the best ones transfigure the plot skeleton with good writing and with issues and relationships that engage us. When we finish a book like "Road Rage," we feel not only the superficial release of discovering who did it, but the more enduring and satisfying sensation of having lived a while in the company of characters we care about in a world as intricate and intractable as our own. Sept. 22, 1997 Rachel Pastan is a columnist and reviewer who lives in Madison, Wisc., where she has recently finished her first novel. BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/sneaks/sneak.html