Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

For the expression quoted in the title of this novel, see Gunner's daughter.
Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

First edition (UK)
Author Ruth Rendell
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Series Inspector Wexford # 15
Genre Crime, Mystery novel
Publisher Hutchinson (UK)
Mysterious Press (US)
Publication date
January 1992
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 345 pp
ISBN 0-09-175218-3
OCLC 26302136
Preceded by The Veiled One
Followed by Simisola

Kissing the Gunner's Daughter is a 1992 novel by the British mystery writer Ruth Rendell, featuring the recurring character Inspector Reg Wexford.[1] 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.[1]

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.[1] 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.[1]

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.[2]

References


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