The publication of a new instalment in the long-running Inspector Wexford series is, for its millions

of fans worldwide, cause for celebration.

When its creator Ruth Rendell appears at writers' festivals they plead with her to abandon the more general crime fiction she also writes under her own name and the psychological thrillers she has, for the past 20 years, produced under her Barbara Vine pseudonym.

But it is this ability to move between different styles and to slot her ideas into whichever approach suits an idea best that has kept Rendell fresh for the four decades plus since she penned her first Wexford, From Doon With Death, in 1964. The last one, End in Tears, was published in 2005.

That freshness and ability to tap into contemporary concerns are among the keys to the 77-year-old's success. Rendell, made a Labour peer a decade ago, has long laced her Wexfords with political and social commentary: the anti-nuclear movement in The Veiled One in 1988; more recently, domestic violence in Harm Done and environmental destruction in Road Rage.

Not in the Flesh continues this trend, its focus the astounding number of people who go missing each day, many never to be seen again, their fate unknown. When a body that has been buried for more than 10 years is found on a patch of disused land lying alongside a wood by a man and his dog, Chief Inspector Reg Wexford and his sidekick Inspector Mike Burden soon realise that discovering not only how he died, and at whose hand, will be difficult - so too will discovering who he was.

The mystery is developed by the discovery of another body in the cellar of an old house in the quiet village of Flagford. It too must be identified and Wexford's team embarks on the endless rounds of tedious inquiries that are the stuff of so much police work.

This is an interesting idea, as Rendell's usually are, with the facelessness of the missing brought to life by a (fictitious) newspaper story, Gone Without Trace, evocatively written by Rendell in

the guise of a young woman whose loving father left home, never to return.

It is sad to report though that those legions of fans are likely to find that Not in the Flesh does not match the high standards set by so many previous Wexfords. Tedious police work does not necessarily make gripping reading, unfortunately, and many of those interviewed by Wexford and his team are rather dull, or in the case of several, including a noted novelist, Owen Tredown, who lives with both his ex- and present wives, irritatingly loopy.

This simple story - perhaps rather too simple to provide the kind of gripping read we have come to expect from Rendell - is complicated, although not enhanced, by the addition of a secondary storyline in which Wexford's actress daughter Sheila tries to prevent the genital mutilation of a young girl, a member of Kingsmarkham's growing Somali community.

This attempt by Rendell to raise awareness of the issue of female circumcision, admirable though it may be, sits awkwardly with the main storyline, with which it has no link other than Sheila's relationship with Wexford and the young girl's relationship to a waitress in the restaurant where he and Burden eat their lunch and ponder their investigation.

Not in the Flesh is well crafted, and an entertaining enough piece of crime fiction, if a little slow, a little predictable and easily read in a single sitting. But it lacks the unsettling air of menace characteristic of so much of Rendell's work, that guiltily enjoyable frisson that comes with the feeling that something ghastly could happen at any moment.