["One Across, Two Down"] is a bleak study of what used to be known as the lower classes, done with the dispassionate air of a surgeon in an operating room. A nagging mother-in-law, living with her daughter and a rat of a son-in-law, is bound to create trouble, especially as she has some money and they do not….

Most of the people in this book are unlovely specimens, and it is hard to work up much interest in them. But Rendell is so acute an observer, and has such an ear for speech patterns, that she has created something resembling a case history. There is a horrid air of truth in "One Across, Two Down," that cements her position as an outstanding realist of the genre.

Newgate Callendar, in a review of "One Across, Two Down," in The New York Times Book Review (copyright © 1971 by The New York...