From Doon with Death

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0099203502
Category : Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
'Love And Death,' Said Chief Inspector Wexford. 'Those Were The Only Two Sensational Things That Ever Happened To Margaret Parsons, Love And Death. The Thing Is They Both Happened In My District.'The Police Knew All About Margaret Parsons' Life, And By The Look Of It, It Was Very Dull. Margaret Parsons Had Been A 'Good Woman'. Religious, Old-Fashioned And Respectable, Her Life Had Been As Spotless And Ordinary As Her Home, As Unexciting And Dependable As Her Marriage. But It Was Not Margaret Parsons' Life That Interested Wexford. It Was Her Death. She Had Been A Predictable, Ordinary Woman - But Now She Had Met A Death Of Passion And Violence For Which There Seemed No Motive Or Clue.

The Girl Next Door

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476784329
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
When bones are discovered in a tin box inside the tunnel a group of long-time friends played in as children, they reunite to recall their adventures in the tunnel for the detective investigating the case.

The Lake of Darkness

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN: 0307557294
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Martin Urban is a quiet bachelor with a comfortable life, free of worry and distractions. When he unexpectedly comes into a small fortune, he decides to use his newfound wealth to help out those in need. Finn also leads a quiet life, and comes into a little money of his own. Normally, their paths would never have crossed. But Martin’s ideas about who should benefit from his charitable impulses yield some unexpected results, and soon the good intentions of the one become fatally entangled with the mercenary nature of the other. In the Lake of Darkness, Ruth Rendell takes the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished to a startling, haunting conclusion.

A New Lease Of Death

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409067890
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Readers of PD James, Ann Cleeves and Donna Leon will love this mesmerising and bone-chilling thriller from multi-million copy and SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Ruth Rendell. You'll be hooked from page one! 'If crime fiction is currently in rude good health, its practitioners striving to better the craft and keep it fresh, vibrant and relevant, this is in no small part thanks to Ruth Rendell.' -- Ian Rankin 'One of the best novelists writing today' - PD James '[Ruth Rendell has a] peerless skill in blending the mundane, commonplace aspects of life with the potent murky impulses of desire and greed, obsession and fear' - Sunday Times 'As usual, brilliant, yes murder but also a lot more, guilt, jealousy and a surprise at the end!!' -- ***** Reader review 'The writing is masterful and the plot excellent' -- ***** Reader review 'Relished every page' -- ***** Reader review ********************************************* SOME CASES ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO BURY. It's impossible to forget the violent bludgeoning to death of an elderly lady in her home. Even more so when it's your first murder case. Wexford believed he'd solved Mrs Primero's murder fifteen years ago. It was no real mystery. Everyone knew Painter, her odd-job man, had done it. There had never been any doubt in anyone's mind. Until now... Henry Archery's son is engaged to Painter's daughter. Only Archery can't let the past remain buried. He wants to prove Wexford wrong... When he starts probing the lives of the witnesses questioned all those years ago, he stirs up more than old ghosts. Wexford's first case was From Doon with Death. Have you read it? His work continues in Wolf to the Slaughter.

The Best Man to Die

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Fawcett
ISBN: 0307829537
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
The stag party was terrific. The incident that followed was terrifying. . . . “The best mystery writer anywere in the English-speaking world.”—The Boston Globe Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be a prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? But it was—and Charlie's death sentence was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Suspense is spiced with ironic twists as Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer. . . . Praise for The Best Man to Die “You cannot afford to miss Ruth Rendell!”—The New York Times Book Review “For readers who have almost given up mysteries . . . Rendell may be just the woman to get them started again.”—Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine “First-rate entertainment.”—Saturday Review

The Caretaker

Author: Doon Arbus
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811229505
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Book Description
A lush, disorienting novel, The Caretaker takes no prisoners as it explores the perils of devotion and the potentially lethal charisma of things Following the death of a renowned and eccentric collector—the author of Stuff, a seminal philosophical work on the art of accumulation—the fate of the privately endowed museum he cherished falls to a peripatetic stranger who had been his fervent admirer. In his new role as caretaker of The Society for the Preservation of the Legacy of Dr. Charles Morgan, this restive man, in service to an absent master, at last finds his calling. The peculiar institution over which he presides is dedicated to the annihilation of hierarchy: peerless antiquities commune happily with the ignored, the discarded, the undervalued and the valueless. What transpires as the caretaker assumes dominion over this reliquary of voiceless objects and over its visitors is told in a manner at once obsessive and matter-of-fact, and in language both cocooning and expansive. A wry and haunting tale, The Caretaker, like the interplanetary crystal that is one of the museum’s treasures, is rare, glistening, and of a compacted inwardness. Kafka or Shirley Jackson may come to mind, and The Caretaker may conjure up various genres—parables, ghost stories, locked-room mysteries—but Doon Arbus draws her phosphorescent water from no other writer’s well.

The Monster in the Box

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439150338
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
From the author called the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world ("Time") comes her newest novel featuring Inspector Wexford.

Murder Being Once Done

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN: 0375704884
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
A young girl is murdered in a cemetery. And Wexford's doctor has prescribed no alcohol, no rich food and, above all, no police work. When a young girl's body is found in a London cemetery and the local police, under the command of Wexford's nephew, are baffled, Wexford decides to brave his doctor's wrath and the condescension of the London police by doing a little investigating of his own. A compelling story of mysterious identity and untimely death, Murder Being Once Done is Rendell at her most sublime. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.

Death Notes

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Fawcett
ISBN: 9780345341983
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
Sir Manuel Camargue, yesterday one of the most celebrated musicians of his time, today floats face down in the lake near his sprawling English country house. The consensus is accidental death -- but Inspector Wexford knows the stench of murder most foul when he smells it. Particularly in the company of two suspects -- one, the victim's fiancee, who is too young to be true, the other his daughter who may be no kin and even less kind . . .

From Doon with Death

Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Fawcett
ISBN: 0307829553
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book Description
Dazzling psychological suspense. Razor-sharp dialogue. Plots that catch and hold like a noose. These are the hallmarks of crime legend Ruth Rendell, “the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world” (Time magazine). From Doon with Death, now in a striking new paperback edition, is her classic debut novel—and the book that introduced one of the most popular sleuths of the twentieth century. There is nothing extraordinary about Margaret Parsons, a timid housewife in the quiet town of Kingsmarkham, a woman devoted to her garden, her kitchen, her husband. Except that Margaret Parsons is dead, brutally strangled, her body abandoned in the nearby woods. Who would kill someone with nothing to hide? Inspector Wexford, the formidable chief of police, feels baffled -- until he discovers Margaret's dark secret: a trove of rare books, each volume breathlessly inscribed by a passionate lover identified only as Doon. As Wexford delves deeper into both Mrs. Parsons’ past and the wary community circling round her memory like wolves, the case builds with relentless momentum to a surprise finale as clever as it is blindsiding. In From Doon with Death, Ruth Rendell instantly mastered the form that would become synonymous with her name. Chilling, richly characterized, and ingeniously constructed, this is psychological suspense at its very finest. Praise for From Doon with Death “One of the most remarkable novelists of her generation.”—People “She has transcended her genre by her remarkable imaginative power to explore and illuminate the dark corners of the human psyche.”—P.D. James