Gallowglass

Gallowglass (1990) by Barbara Vine. Barbara Vine, a pseudonym for Ruth Rendell, reminds me vaguely of a British Elmore Leonard. She gets inside the criminal's mind, and it's frequently an amusing, if macabre, view. In this book we are confronted with Little Joe, a simpleton who has hooked up with a brooding criminal named Sandor. Sandor is obsessed with kidnapping a woman he refers to as The Princess, but we are only slowly made aware of his motives because we see and hear everything through the lens of Little Joe's perception. It's a good read, but I found the ending a little disappointing. Grade: B