Ruth Rendell Books

An omnibus edition of three Ruth Rendell crime novels - A Demon in My View, A Judgement in Stone and The Face of Trespass.

These 16 stories explore the nightmarish point where sensuality and horror meet. Displaying their unique talents with a focus on dark fantasy, each writer offers a sophisticated tale that will delight fans of horror, erotica, and quality short fiction alike. Authors include Clive Barker, Joyce Carol Oates, Dan Simmons and Doug Clegg.

Four collections of some of Ruth Rendell's greatest original crime thrillers.

This Ruth Rendell omnibus of Inspector Wexford novels includes "A New Lease of Death", "The Best Man to Die", "Wolf to the Slaughter" and "Put On By Cunning". The author won the Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger in 1976 for "A Demon in my View".

Deux longues nouvelles, issues d'imaginaires étonnamment fertiles... Dans L'arbousier, Ruth Rendell met en scène une famille anglaise en vacances en Espagne dont l'été est gâché par un événement mystérieux et déchirant. En un long flash-back, la soeur se remémore le séjour maudit : se mêlent dans son récit l'exotisme des vacances méditerranéennes et l'amertume d'un destin marqué à tout jamais par la tragédie. À tout jamais ? Bien sûr que non, car Rendell nous réserve pour la fin une série de revirements aussi subtils qu'habiles.Cette grande dame du suspense a demandé à un jeune talent, Helen Simpson, de paraître à son côté dans ce volume. Le récit de Simpson, Chair et herbe, nous plonge dans un monde macabre, peuplé de personnages sinistres : un chef cuisinier avec de drôles de recettes, un médecin pervers qui se livre à des machinations douteuses, une fillette assassinée dans la forêt... Tissé d'ambiances étranges, avec un style des plus insolites, ce texte nous entraîne dans un univers décidément inquiétant.

This first in a series of anthologies sponsored by the British Crime Writers Association features 22 short stories with urban themes. The editor notes that he was looking for stories that offered imaginative takes on the familiar idea of big-city cr

An omnibus edition of three Inspector Wexford mysteries - Wolf to the Slaughter, Put on by Cunning and The Speaker of Mandarin.

Jenny's marriage is loveless, and she is having an affair. She works at an old people's home, where she is especially fond of Stella, a woman dying of cancer - whose own secrets parallel Jenny's - with the difference that she may have been involved in murdering her lover's husband.

Elena asks that you come to the House of Swans at once... Compelled by this message, the wealthy, sybaritic Sextus Roscius goes not to his harlot, but to his doom—savagely murdered by unknown assassins. In the unseasonable heat of a spring morning in 80 B.C., Gordianus the Finder is summoned to the house of Cicero, a young advocate staking his reputation on this case. The charge is patricide; the motive, a son's greed. The punishment, rooted deep in Roman tradition, is horrific beyond imagining.Gordianus's investigation takes him through the city's raucous, pungent streets and deep into urban Umbria, unraveling layers of deceit, twisted passions, and murderous desperation. From pompous, rouged nobles to wily slaves to citizens of seemingly simple virtue, the case becomes a political nightmare. As the defense proceeds toward a devastating confrontation in the Forum, one man's fate may be threaten the very leaders of Rome itself.

In the long, hot summer of 1976, a group of young people is camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. In short, they exist. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall's animal cemetery. Which woman? Whose child?

LIKE MOST FAMILIES THEY HAD THEIR SECRETS And hid them under a genteelly respectable veneer. No onlooker would guess that Vera Hillyard and her beautiful sister, Eden, were locked in a dark and bitter combat over one of those secrets. England in the fifties was not kind to women who erred...so they had to fight it out behind closed curtains using every weapon they had. In this case, murder.

This omnibus includes three Inspector Wexford novels, Some Lie and Some Die, Shake Hands Forever and A Sleeping Life. The author has won three Gold Dagger Awards from the Crime Writers Association and three Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America.

This work is set in 1905. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to east London from Denmark with their two sons. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keeps loneliness and isolation at bay by writing her diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal, for they seem to hold the key to an unsolved murder, to the quest for a missing child and to the enigma surrounding Asta's daughter, Swanny. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before.

There are only two things in life that interest Stanley: solving crossword puzzles, and getting his hands on his mother-in-law's money. And in all those years it has never once occurred to Stanley that she would try to outsmart him and the money might never be his.

The Killing Doll: Weaves together the ultimately deadly stories of Pup Yearman, who sold his soul to the devil, his unhappy older sister, and butcher-knife keeper Diarmit Bawne. .... Live Flesh: After ten years in prison for shooting -- and permanently crippling -- a young policeman, Victor Jenner is released to a strange new world and told to make a new life for himself. It's hard to fill the days, but at least there's one blessing -- he was never convicted for all those rapes he committed. Then Victor meets David, the policeman he shot all those years ago, and David's beautiful girlfriend, Clare. And suddenly Victor's new life is starting to look an awful lot like the old one . . .

Simon Serrailler's story began in The Various Haunts of Men (about a serial killer) and continued with The Pure in Heart (about a kidnapped schoolboy) Susan Hill is not afraid to tackle difficult issues, nor to face up to the realities of st

Teddy Brex emerges from a loveless, isolated childhood as a handsome but autistic young man. Francine Hill, traumatized by the murder of her mother, grows into a beautiful young woman. Teddy rides to her rescue, but he is a man who has already committed two murders

Detective Mike Burden's wife has just died, and his sister-in-law is staying at his house to help take care of his two children. He is so utterly miserable, and grief stricken, that he can't see how much they all need him to focus himself on his home life. Partially because of his inability to deal with his personal life, when a 5-year-old boy disappears, he throws himself whole-heartedly into the investigation. He becomes over involved with the boy's mother. The recent disappearance of a 12-year-old girl makes the case more worrisome.

The Macmillan Graded Readers series is one of the most popular and respected series of simplified readers for learners of English.

Sir Manuel Carmargue, one of the greatest flautists of his time, was dead. Misadventure. An old man, ankle-deep in snow, he lost his foothold in the dark, slipping into the water to be trapped under a lid of ice. Only a glove remained to point to where he lay, one of its fingers rising out of the drifts. There's nothing Chief Inspector Wexford likes better than an open-and-shut case. They're so restful. And yet there are one or two niggling doubts - and the disturbing return of Carmargue's daughter, now a considerable heiress, after an absence of nineteen years. Is Wexford going to listen to that nagging inner voice of his? And if he does, what exactly does he plan to do?

When Sandor snatched little Joe from the path of a London Tube train, he was quick to make clear the terms of the rescue. 'I saved your life,' he told the homeless youngster, 'so your life belongs to me now'. Sandor began to tell him a fairy-tale: an ageing prince, a kidnapped princess chained by one ankle, a missed rendezvous.

Gone with the Wind is a great romantic story of love and war and one of the best-selling books of all time. In Part 2, the American Civil War has destroyed Scarlett O’Hara’s comfortable world. Will she lose her home too? Or can she save it and rebuild her life?

Chief Inspector Wexford, injured in a car bombing, must rely on Detective Mike Burden to catch a killer in what appears to be a murder without motive   Chief Inspector Wexford couldn’t know that the bundle of rags in the parking garage concealed a body. He’d just been doing a bit of light shopping, after all, not looking for dead housewives. Wexford won’t be on the case for long; a car bomb sends him to the hospital, and Inspector Mike Burden must match wits with a would-be murderer. But just how close to the edge of madness must Burden go to catch a killer?   With rich characterization Rendell plumbs the depths of human character, revealing the secrets that lie hidden in the most ordinary lives.

It was some time since Benet had seen her mad mother. So when Mopsa arrived at the airport, looking colourless in a dowdy grey suit, Benet tried not to hate her. But the tragic death of a child begins a chain of deception, kidnap and murder. Domestic dramas exploding into deaths and murders ... threads are drawn together in a lethal pattern.

"When her mother, Eve, tells Liza that she must leave their remote home, the gatehouse of a country mansion, Liza is terrified. Although seventeen years of age, she has never been on a bus or a train, has never played with a child of her own age. She has almost no knowledge of a world described by her mother as evil and destructive. Their strange, enclosed life together is over because Eve has killed a man. And he is not the first. With 100 pounds in cash, Liza is cast adrift. However, she is not alone. There is one particular secret that she has kept from her mother - her love affair with a young man who worked in the big house. With him, gradually Liza learns about the world, about herself, and must come to terms with the possibility that the murderous violence of her mother may be present in her." -back cover.

Eleven masterful, eerie suspense tales by the outstanding English mystery writer show what happens when the sinister thoughts of ordinary people are unleashed

A crime mystery based around the London Underground and the people frequenting it

The twelfth book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford. Having just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime holiday in China, Wexford finds himself haunted by memories of the old woman with bound feet who mysteriously followed him from one city to the next and the man who tragically drowned.

Susan Townsend was the only resident with no interest in her next-door neighbour's affair. Yet it was Susan who found the bodies of the lovers, locked not in passion, but in death.

Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be the prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? And Charlie's death was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Now Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer . . .

Stephen Whalby loves to walk the moor. It is a dark and forbidding place, but it is his. When the body of a young blonde woman is found there, her face horrifically disfigured, the victim of a merciless murderer, his beloved moor is tainted with suspicion and terror. Then a second woman goes missing on the moor and Stephen watches as the search party make their way across the treacherous murder scene. Not to be usurped by a killer or a victim; he, and only he, is the master of the moor.

What on earth could have provoked a modern day St. Valentine's Day massacre? On Valentine's Day, four members of the Coverdale family - George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles - were murdered in the space of 15 minutes. Their housekeeper, Eunice Parchman, shot them, one by one, in the blue light of a televised performance of Don Giovanni. When Detective Chief Superintendent William Vetch arrests Miss Parchman two weeks later, he discovers a second tragedy: the key to the Valentine's Day massacre hidden within a private humiliation Eunice Parchman has guarded all her life. A brilliant rendering of character, motive, and the heady discovery of truth, A Judgement in Stone is among Ruth Rendell's finest psychological thrillers.

The seventh book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford. But then he discovers that his nephew Howard is heading the investigation into the macabre murder of Loveday Morgan, whose body was found abandoned in Kenbourne Cemetery.

The middle-aged woman lying on the footpath is biggish and unattractive. Yet even in death her eyes hold a defiant look. Everyone in this Kingsmarkham neighborhood knew her name was Rhoda Comfrey and that she was down from London visiting her invalid father. But when Inspector Wexford looks further, he finds Miss Comfrey's life for the past twenty years is a complete mystery. She leaves behind no address, no job, no banker, no friends. Wexford's only clue to her killer is an elegant wallet from a posh London shop...but his instinct tells him that behind this murder lies a tangled web of the most sordid sort.

"A Ruth Rendell Mystery Two years ago he had been a promising young novelist. Now he survived you could hardly call it living - in a near derelict cottage with only an unhooked telephone and his own obsessive thoughts for company. Two years of loving Drusilla - the bored, rich, unstable girl with everything she needed, and a husband she wanted dead. The affair was over. But the long slide into deception and violence had just begun. . . 'A beautiful double-take plot. And characters seen with compassion. Her best yet!' H. R. F. KEATING THE TIMES"

A mutilated body found at a rock festival. In spite of dire predictions, the rock festival in Kingsmarkham seemed to be going off without a hitch, until the hideously disfigured body is discovered in a nearby quarry. And soon Wexford is investigating the links between a local girl gone bad and a charismatic singer who inspires an unwholesome devotion in his followers.Some Lie and Some Dieis a devilishly absorbing novel, in which Wexford's deductive powers come up against the aloof arrogance of pop stardom. 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. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Murder, corruption, blackmail. All these are part of someone else's world, not part of the everyday lives of ordinary people...or are they? This is a collection of sinister stories from the bestselling author who won The Sunday Times Literary Award for 1990.

Weaves together the ultimately deadly stories of Pup Yearman, who sold his soul to the devil, his unhappy older sister, and butcher-knife keeper Diarmit Bawne.

A by-pass is planned in Kingsmarkham - that will destroy its peace and the natural habitat forever. Dora Wexford joins the protest movement. But Wexford must be more circumspect. Trouble is expected. But before the protesters make their presence felt, the

A woman phoned to say she and her husband went to Paris for the weekend, leaving their children with a - well, teen-sitter, I suppose, got back last night to find the lot gone and naturally she assumes they've all drowned.'There hadn't been anything like

This title contains two novels by Ruth Rendell - 'The Bridesmaid' and 'To Fear a Painted Devil'.

In a college town two schoolgirls live with their widowed father Luke, a gentle well-educated man, meticulous and orderly. Elvira and Spinny are watchful however for Luke plans to remarry and has chosen Mary. The threat to the girls world is removed, however, when Mary falls to her death.

New and uncollected tales of murder, mischief, magic and madness. Ruth Rendell was an acknowledged master of psychological suspense: these are ten (and a quarter) of her most chillingly compelling short stories, collected here together for the first time. In these tales, a businessman boasts about cheating on his wife, only to find the tables turned. A beautiful country rectory reverberates to the echo of a historical murder. A compulsive liar acts on impulse, only to be lead inexorably to disaster. And a wealthy man finds there is more to his wife's kidnapping than meets the eye.Atmospheric, gripping and never predictable, this is Ruth Rendell at her inimitable best. The stories are: Never Sleep in a Bed Facing a Mirror; A Spot of Folly; The Price of Joy; The Irony of Hate; Digby's Wives; The Haunting of Shawley Rectory; A Drop Too Much; The Thief; The Long Corridor of Time; In the Time of his Prosperity; and Trebuchet.Introduction from Sophie Hannah.

A collection of five short mystery stories featuring Chief Inspector Wexford.

Martin Urban has always led a confortable and safe life. Until he wins a fortune on the pools and decides to use some of his new-found wealth to help those less fortunate than himself...Finn lives a dangerous life and he too comes into some money. But his came in cash, wrapped in newspaper. Finn is also interested in helping people - as long as the price is right.If all had remained as it had been, the path of Martin and that of Finn would never have crossed. But Martin's money - which he hopes to use to change the lives of strangers - changes his own life as well. And so it is that the good intentions of one become fatally entangled with the macabre madness of the other.

Philip Wardman had more than just trhe ordinary squeamishness where death was concerned. Yet he could hardly avoid the suspicious disappearance of his sister's friend Rebecca Neave, especially when everyone was ascribing the cause to murder. Philip's fenimine ideal is the statue of the Roman Goddess Flora in his mother's garden. His marble Flora doesn't fade, doesn't alter, doesn't die. But then he meets Senta Pelham a beautiful, sensual, childlike actress who flgrantly disdains the morals of society and passionately desires the elusive Philip - container.

Unkindness: the collective word for a group of ravens. They are not particularly predatory birds . . . but neither are they soft and submissive. Detective Chief Inspector Wexford thought he was merely doing a neighbourly good deed when he agreed to talk to Joy Williams about her missing husband. And he certainly didn't expect to be investigating a most unusual homicide . . .

This is a haunting & dramatic collection of long & short stories which reveal the amazing range of one of Britain's major novelists. It features the first Wexford short story to have appeared since Means of Evil.

Alan Groombridge had a fantasy. Husband to a woman he didn't like, father of two children he had never wanted, and manager of the second smallest branch of the Anglian-Victoria bank in the country, Alan was doomed to a life of domestic boredom and tedious routine. All that saved him was one fantasy: stealing enough of the bank's money to allow him just one year of freedom - one year in which to live a different sort of life. But one day there was no more dreaming and no more games. The Anglian-Victoria bank was robbed and both manager and cashier disappeared. ln place of the dull and dreary repetition that had once existed, there came a brutal, chilling nightmare that might never, never end.

Victor Jenner is a sociopath. After ten years in prison for shooting - and permanently crippling - a young policeman, Victor is released to a strange new world and told to make a new life for himself. And suddenly Victor's new life is starting to look an awful lot like the old one.

Set in and around London's Regents Park, where the city's wealthiest, poorest, kindest, and most vicious citizens all cross paths, this newest novel by the Edgar and Gold Dagger-winning author of Crocodile Bird tells of the deadly thanks a young woman risks receiving in return for an act of selfless generosity.

She waits for him in the dark, her mind and body perfect, passive, until one day, when he goes to the cellar, and she is gone . . . In A Demon in My View, Ruth Rendell creates a character as frightening as he is fascinating. Mild-mannered Arthur Johnson has never known how to talk to women. And his loneliness has perverted his desire for love and respect into a carefully controlled penchant for violence. One floor below him, a scholar finishing his thesis on psychopathic personalities is about to stumble—quite literally—upon one of Arthur's many secrets. Haunting and intelligent, A Demon in My View shows the startling results of this chilling alchemy of two very disparate minds—one pathological and the other obsessed with pathology.

The second book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford. Called in to investigate, Chief Inspector Wexford quickly determines that the Nightingales were considered the perfect couple - wealthy, attractive and without an enemy in the world. Someone who hated - or perhaps loved - her enough to beat her to death.

Tim Cornish, a creative writing student, sits composing a confession: an admission of a crime committed two years ago that has yet to be discovered. It began when he first encountered Ivo, a magnetic man, older than himself, and felt compelled to kiss him. By the time they travel together to Alaska's glacial wastes, Tim has fallen in and out of love with Ivo; his real passion is now only for Isabel whom he has met in Ivo's absence. The horror of Tim's subsequent journey with Ivo, battling with disgust and despair, may andure in his memory for ever

Called to Tancred House, to a scene of ghastly carnage, Chief Inspector Wexford must bring his considerable detective skills to bear on a case with no witnesses, two suspects who have vanished into thin air, conflicting clues, and a kaleidoscope of motives.

Safe houses and secret message drops, double crosses and defections -- it sounds like the stuff of sophisticated espionage, but the agents are only schoolboys engaged in harmless play. But John Creevey doesn't know this. To him, the messages he decodes with painstaking care are the communications of dangerous and evil men, and as he comes face to face with the fact of his beloved wife Jennifer's defection, he begins to see a way to get back at the man she left him for. And soon the schoolboys are playing more than just a game . . .

This omnibus contains two of Ruth Rendell's crime novels - 'The Lake of Darkness' and 'The Veiled One'.

Blood. That's what Martin Nanther's great-grandfather Henry was interested in. As Queen Victoria's faboured physician he became expert in diseases of the blood, particularly the royal disease of haemophilia. But, as Martin discovers whilst researching Henry's life, he was not just expert - he was obsessed. Yet reading between the lines of Henry's medical essays and diary, Martin begins to suspect that his great-grandfather was less than candid about both his life and work. What was he trying to conceal? Were the tragedies of his family life more than mere accidents? And what implications does it have for Martin, the blood doctor's descendant?

Like any small community, Linchester has its intrigues: love affairs, money problems, unhappy marriages. But the gossip is elevated to new heights when young Patrick Selby dies on the very night of his beautiful wife's birthday party. The whole neighbourhood was there, witness to the horrible attack of wasp stings Patrick suffered at the end of the evening. But did Patrick die of a wasp sting? Dr. Greenleaf thinks not. Heart failure, more likely . Still, Greenleaf isn't at peace about his death. After all, everyone in Linchester hated Patrick. With the help of a certain naturalist, Dr. Greenleaf begins to think about murder.

This chilling novel about serial killer in contemporary London is penned by one of the most celebrated mystery writers of our time. As the story gets under way, readers have no idea how a series of vicious stabbings could connect to the colorful cast of interacting characters.

The twenty-fourth book in the bestselling Detective Chief Inspector Wexford series, from the author of classic detective fiction and gripping psychological thrillers including End in Tears and Thirteen Steps Down. Tom Ede is now a Detective Superintendent, and is very keen to recruit Wexford as an adviser on a mysterious murder case.

An omnibus edition of three of Ruth Rendell's Wexford mysteries. They feature a predictable, ordinary woman who meets a passionate death, a reinvestigation of a hanging 15 years earlier, and the puzzling death of a cocky little lorry-driver.

Nine stories from a master of psychological suspense--including one classic detective story featuring Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford--probe the darkest regions of the human psyche. Reprint.

Mystery surrounds the disappearance of Melanie, the local doctor's daughter - Chief Inspector Wexford takes a personal interest in the case___

'In GOING WRONG she has quite simply transformed the genre of crime writing. She deploys her peerless skills in blending the mundane, commonplace aspects of life with the potent, murky impulses of desire and greed, obsession and fear. . this is a book that cannot be taken for granted, and no reader should pass it by. ' ANTHONY CLARE. SUNDAY TIMES

'Someone had told Dex that the Queen lived in Victoria. So did he, but she had a palace and he had one room in a street off Warwick Way. Still he liked the idea that she was his neighbour.' Dex works as a gardener for Dr Jefferson at his home on Hexam Place in Pimlico: an exclusive street of white-painted stucco Georgian houses inhabited by the rich, and serviced by the not so rich. The hired help, a motley assortment of au pairs, drivers and cleaners, decide to form the St Zita Society (Zita was the patron saint of domestic servants) as an excuse to meet at the local pub and air their grievances. When Dex is invited to attend one of these meetings, the others find that he is a strange man, seemingly ill at ease with human beings. These first impressions are compounded when they discover he has recently been released from a hospital for the criminally insane, where he was incarcerated for attempting to kill his own mother. Dex's most meaningful relationship seems to be with his mobile phone service provider, Peach, and he interprets the text notifications and messages he receives from the company as a reassuring sign that there is some kind of god who will protect him. And give him instructions about ridding the world of evil spirits . . . Accidental death and pathological madness cohabit above and below stairs in Hexam Place.

Set in a London apartment building, this psychologically thrilling novel explores the lives of its eccentric residents and the dark secrets they harbor. As the characters' hidden truths emerge, the story delves into the dangers of knowing too much about one's neighbors, weaving a tense narrative that keeps readers on edge. The interplay of mystery and psychological depth highlights the complexities of human relationships and the potential perils of intimacy in urban life.

It was a brutal, vicious crime -- sixteen years old. A helpless old woman battered to death with an axe. Harry Painter hung for it, and Chief Inspector Wexford is certain they executed the right man. But Reverend Archery has doubts . . . because his son wants to marry the murderer's beautiful, brilliant daughter. He begins unravelling the past, only to discover that murder breeds murder -- and often conceals even deeper secrets . . .

No Man's Nightingale- the eagerly anticipated twenty-fourth title in Ruth Rendell's bestselling Detective Chief Inspector Wexford series. The woman vicar of St Peter's Church may not be popular among the community of Kingsmarkham. But it still comes as a profound shock when she is found strangled in her vicarage. Inspector Wexford is retired, but he retains a relish for solving mysteries especially when they are as close to home as this one is. So when he's asked whether he will assist on the case, he readily agrees. But why did the vicar die? And is anyone else in Kingsmarkham in danger? What Wexford doesn't know is that the killer is far closer than he, or anyone else, thinks.

The long title story is about a man whose life, in a sense, is a book. The second novella, High Mysterious Union, explores a strange, erotic universe in a dream-like corner of rural England, and illustrates very atmospherically what range Ruth Rendell has as a writer, expanding beyond her famous sphere of crime writing.

Sie waren Papas ein und alles, aber sie hatten keine Ahnung, wer Papa in Wirklichkeit war. Die älteste Tochter Sarah beginnt, die Lebensgeschichte des verstorbenen Vaters zu schreiben. Sarah taucht ein in die Untiefen eines Lebens, das wie das Meer an der Küste von Devonshire, an der der Familiensitz liegt, morsche Bruchstücke freigibt. Zum Vorschein kommen beängstigende Details eines Doppellebens.

Chief Inspector Wexford investigates the circumstances surrounding a blood-soaked hotel room which lacks any other signs of a victim, and the disappearance of a beautiful, promiscuous woman and the bundle of cash she'd had in her pocket.

A classic Rendellian loner, Mix Cellini is superstitious about the number 13. Living in a decaying house in Notting Hill, Mix is obsessed with 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed a series of foul murders. But when reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes.

When Margaret Parsons disappears, Inspector Burden tries to reassure her frantic husband that she will be back by morning. Privately, though, he is certain Margaret has run off with another man. But then the missing woman's body is found, strangled and abandoned in a nearby wood. And when Mr. Parsons lets the police into his home, a startling discovery leads everyone to question just who Margaret Parsons really was . . .

Inspector Wexford confronts the terrifying world of domestic violence when a series of kidnappings leads back to his own daughter's volunteer work at a shelter for battered women

Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, and the post-mortem can not reveal the precise cause of death. Wexford knows

Wealthy Alice Whittaker -- now Alice Fielding -- is known for her generosity, and when her friend Nesta vanishes Alice is determined to find her and help her. If that means money, well, Alice has plenty of it. Then Alice starts to feel sick -- a virus perhaps, something she just can't shake. Her handsome husband, who is ten years younger than she is, seems determined to keep her at home. Does he just want her to feel better? Or is he trying to keep her from finding Nesta? Ill though she is, Alice can't help asking questions. And the more she learns about Nesta's disappearance, the more certain she becomes that her own life is in peril....