This series follows the work of an experienced English detective as he tackles complex cases in a seemingly tranquil, yet often deceptive, setting. Alongside his team, he uncovers dark secrets and intricate motives hidden beneath the surface of ordinary life. With a focus on character psychology and meticulous investigation, it offers compelling reading for fans of classic detective fiction.
![No more dying then : [a chief inspector Wexford mystery]](https://rezised-images.knhbt.cz/1920x1920/42235625.webp)
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 . . .
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 . . .
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.
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 . . .
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.
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 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.
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.
Most people would have screamed. Mrs Hathall made no sound. She had seen death many times, but she had never witnessed death by violence. Heavily, she plodded across the room and descended the stairs to where her son waited. "There's been an accident," she said. "Your wife's dead." Chief Inspector Wexford could discover no motive, no reason, no suspect. All he had were his own intuitive suspicions. Probably he was reading meaning where there was none; probably Angela Hathall really had picked up a stranger, and that stranger had killed her. But why such doubt? Is Wexford becoming cynical and untrusting? Or is this simply one of the most ingenious crimes he has ever tackled?
Rhoda Comfrey's death seemed unremarkable; the real mystery was her life. In A Sleeping Life , master mystery writer Ruth Rendell unveils an elaborate web of lies and deception painstakingly maintained by a troubled soul. A wallet found in Comfrey's handbag leads Inspector Wexford to Mr. Grenville West, a writer whose plots revel in the blood, thunder, and passion of dramas of old; whose current whereabouts are unclear; and whose curious secretary--the plain Polly Flinders--provides the Inspector with more questions than answers. And when a second Grenville West comes to light, Wexford faces a dizzying array of possible scenarios--and suspects--behind the Comfrey murder. Brilliantly entertaining, exceptionally crafted, A Sleeping Life evokes the dark realities, half-truths, and flights of fancy that constitute a life.
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?
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.
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 . . .
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.
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.
Mystery surrounds the disappearance of Melanie, the local doctor's daughter - Chief Inspector Wexford takes a personal interest in the case___
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
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
This was an investigation which would call into question many of Wexford's assumptions about the way people behave, including his own family. . . In The Babes in the Wood Ruth Rendell brings her keen psychological insight and rigorous moral sense to bear on Wexford’s assumptions about the way people behave, including his own family, as he investigates the mysterious disappearance of two teenagers and their babysitter. There hadn't been anything in living memory like the kind of rain that had caused the River Brede to burst its banks and flood the homes in the area. The Subaqua Task Force could find no trace of the missing teenagers and their babysitter…but their mother was still convinced that her children were dead.
A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But, only for a while ... it is impossible for Chief Inspector Wexford not to wonder how terrible it would be to discover that one of his daughters had been murdered
Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury - a human hand. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped in a purple cotton sheet. The post mortem cannot reveal the precise cause of death. The only clue is a crack in one of the dead man's ribs.
When Wexford starts out as a young police officer, he is involved with a murder case where the perpetrator is not brought to justice. All these years, Wexford has harboured suspicions about the possible killer, who suddenly returns to Kingsmarkham. There are other apparently unrelated deaths, and once more Wexford is on the trail to uncover the evidence that will make the crucial connections. Ruth Rendell takes us back in time, not only to resolve a series of crimes, but to show Wexford as a young man, meeting Dora, his future wife, and developing into the unique, instinctive yet methodical detective that he becomes.
In the peaceful garden of a London house, a manhole cover has just been raised. Inside the cellar lie three bodies. Two men and a woman. None carry identification. The men have been there for twelve years; the woman for only two. For Inspector Wexford, this is a case worth coming out of retirement for. Soon he is trying to establish who the victims in the vault are - and most importantly who put them there. But a shocking development in his private life means that his search for the truth is about to become a lot more complicated ...
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.
V pěti povídkách musí Wexford se svým týmem vyřešit zcela odlišné záhady a poradit si se zdánlivě nesourodými stopami. Jak souvisí otrava houbami s nepochopitelnou sebevraždou mladé ženy? Proč bohatá důchodkyně zemřela, zrovna když měl její lékař dovolenou? Z jakého důvodu někdo unesl z kočárku nemluvně ve chvíli, kdy v jiné části města probíhala loupež drahocenných klenotů? Proč se inspektor při dovolené v Chorvatsku díval ženám po nohách a co má společného obyčejný kalendář s tragickým případem otravy jedem? 1. vydání.
What connects a kidnapped baby, a woman's body left to rot in a cove in Yugoslavia, a suspicious suicide and the century-old case of a wife who poisons her husband? Then Wexford discovers Paddy Jasper has returned to Kingsmarkham, a man previously investigated by Wexford for violently abusing a child.
A collection of five short mystery stories featuring Chief Inspector Wexford.
