The topic was certainly interesting and the book makes an attempt to thread the current age with the past, but the pacing is completely off. The book trudges along so slowly that it's hard to maintain an interest. A number of themes are very deliberately and unnecessarily repeated (blood blood blood!), every attractive female apparently resembles the narrator's wife, and a huge number of characters and names make it hard to keep up at times. If you are observant it isn't difficult to figure out the big reveal about a quarter of the way through the book.

If the story had been told in about half the length, it would have been great. As it stands, The Blood Doctor requires some patience to get through.

( )

As she often did, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) took circumstances that were prompted by her position and work in the House of Lords as a springboard for this stand-alone novel. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1996 Birthday Honours and a life peer as Baroness Rendell of Babergh, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk, on 24 October 1997. She sat in the House of Lords for the Labour Party. In 1998 Rendell was named in a list of the party's biggest private financial donors.

The reform of the House of Lords took place in 1998 just after she had been made a life peer so what is happening to Martin Nanther is essentially what was happening there, although of course she was a life peer, not an hereditary one like Nanther.

By the time of the reform, the House of Lords was being overwhelmed by an excess of hereditary peers and had become unsustainable and unwieldy in its present form. The idea that the blood of the hereditary peers was somehow "special" had lost favour. They wouldn't lose their titles or their estates, simply their right to sit in the House of Lords.

Martin Nanther has begun amassing memorabilia about his great grandfather Henry Nanther, given a hereditary peerage at the end of the nineteenth century by Queen Victoria for his work on diseases of the blood, particularly of haemophilia of which she was a carrier (which she refused to recognise), and which her own sons and grandsons were afflicted by.

Martin is transfixed by a letter written by one of his great-aunts in which she says Henry Nanther had done terrible things. Martin aims to eventually write a biography of his great-grandfather, and his research takes him to meet cousins and distant relatives whom he has never met, and to become aware of the presence of "tainted" blood in his own family.

Running alongside the main plot is the sub-plot of Martin and his second wife Jude attempting to have a baby, and the revelation that it is a genetic problem that is causing her frequent miscarriages.

This wasn't a book I could read quickly. There was quite a lot of history to absorb, and though I read it in large print, or perhaps because I did, it was also quite weighty.

However, a fascinating read. ( )

Ruth Rendell was an highly accomplished writer. This book I found to be a long slog. ( )

I am not terribly impressed with this book -- it may work best for folks obsessed with genealogy and their family history, to show how tricky such research can be and how near impossible it is to come up with a coherent narrative for your past, based on the skimpy facts you may discover. Otherwise, this was really slow-going; the whole House of Lords plot struck me as contrived (including its ending), and the main character did not do much for me. ( )

(55) I am a little torn in rating this one. I enjoy this author - the pen name of Ruth Rendell - so much. I have never disliked anything of hers that I have read. Indeed, I loved most of this novel as biographer Martin Nanther, member of the House of Lords, tried to puzzle out his great, great grandfather who was a physician to Queen Victoria. Lord Nanther, MD. is a specialist in hemophilia which of course is a family curse for the royals throughout Europe during this time. Martin finds some old letters that suggests his great grandfather was not what he seemed and in fact, may have been a blood doctor in more than one way.

I loved the epistolary mystery and Martin trying to put together the pieces in this way. Genealogy and family secrets always intrigue me. The wintry train wreck, and the mysterious murder definitely added the haunting element and I read on eagerly. The modern day plot however with Martin's wife Jude struggling to have a baby and the debate in the House of Lords over hereditary peers was a bit of a bore. I appreciate the thematic integrity but those story lines were not particularly engaging for me. Surely, there needed to be some punchline regarding the implications for the unborn and recently born children in the story . . . but alas. So there is my complaint. It fizzled. I definitely guessed the reveal but actually thought there would be much more vis a vis Eleanor vs Edith and modern day implications for the newly conceived.

So while Vine (Rendell) still spins a good story this one lacked a bit of the psychological tension I have come to expect from her and the ending was not as good as many of her novels. I am still going with 4 stars (perhaps a bit generous) because I read this eagerly and enjoyed most of the ride. And I look forward to the several other of her books I have waiting for me. ( )