7.8 /10 1 Votes
Language English Publication date January 1992 Originally published January 1992 Preceded by The Veiled One Country United Kingdom | 3.9/5 Goodreads Series Inspector Wexford # 15 Pages 345 pp Followed by Simisola Genres Crime Fiction, Mystery | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Publisher Hutchinson (UK)
Mysterious Press (US) Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Similar Ruth Rendell books, Crime Fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Kissing the Gunner's Daughter is a 1992 novel by the British mystery writer Ruth Rendell, featuring the recurring character Inspector Reg Wexford. The title of the book refers to historical corporal punishment in the Royal Navy where a sailor was positioned over a cannon to receive a flogging.
Contents
Plot
Four members of a well-to-do family in Kingsmarkham are shot during dinner, and only Daisy survives with minor injuries. Daisy is the teenage granddaughter of Davina Flory, a popular writer. Wexford wishes to protect her in a fatherly way, as he is with his own daughter Sheila, whose new boyfriend Augustine Casey is a post-post-modernist novelist who has already published a novel devoid of any characters. Daisy had never met her father. Wexford finds that Daisy's father is a former football player nicknamed "Gunner" because he played for Arsenal Football Club.
Critical reception
Entertainment Weekly praised the novel's analysis of class politics in Britain, but found the plot and its denouement both obvious and far-fetched.