Ruth Rendell

Rendell, Ruth

Harm Done

A young girl disappears, then another.

A notorious paedophile is released back into the community. The residents of the Muriel Campden Estate are up in arms, and even prepared to take the law into their own hands...

Chief Inspector Wexford is not only...Read more

An Unkindness Of Ravens

Rodney Williams's disappearance seems typical to Chief Inspector Wexford -- a simple case of a man running off with a woman other than his wife. But when another woman reports that her husband is missing, the case turns unpleasantly complex.Read more

End in Tears

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But only for a while...

One particular member of the local press is gunning for the Chief Inspector, distinctly unimpressed...Read more

Not in the Flesh

The twenty-first book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford.Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something slightly less savoury - a human hand. The corpse, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years...Read more

Death Notes

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...Read more

A Sleeping Life

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...Read more

Murder Being Once Done

It seems fitting that the final resting place of a girl's body should be in a graveyard. But this is no peaceful burial. This is a brutal murder scene.

Under strict orders from his doctor to indulge in no criminal investigation, Wexford is sent...Read more

The Best Man To Die

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...Read more

A Guilty Thing Surprised

Elizabeth Nightingale found peace and tranquility on her nightly walks through the rich, dense forests surrounding Myfleet Manor. But the peace she treasured was shattered one night when she found death waiting in the woods. Chief Inspector Wexford and his colleague Inspector Burden find a...Read more

Wolf to the Slaughter

Anita Margolis has vanished. But with no body and no apparent crime, there's seemingly nothing for Inspector Wexford to investigate.

Anita Margolis has vanished. Dark and exquisite, Anita's character is as mysterious as her disappearance. But with no body and no apparent crime,...Read more

A New Lease Of Death

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...Read more

From Doon With Death

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...Read more

A Fatal Inversion

In the long hot summer of 1976, a group of young people are 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...Read more

Blood Lines: Long and Short Stories

I think you know who killed your stepfather', said Wexford, and so begins this scintillating collection of long and short stories by the world's best living crime writer, Ruth Rendell. It was clear both to Wexford and Burden that Tom Peterlee was not killed for £360, but various people...Read more

The Water's Lovely

'Weeks went by when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring it back or it would return in a dream. The dream began in the same way. She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following Heather's lead through the bedroom to what was on the other side, not a...Read more

The Mammoth Book of Best International Crime

Leading anthologist Maxim Jakubowski presents the very best in crime writing from around the world - 40 short stories from an all-star line-up of international writers. They cover the full spectrum of crime fiction, from noir and thrillers, to whodunnits and procedurals, with settings that...Read more

The Fifth Wexford Omnibus

The 5th Wexford Omnibus includes:

Means of Evil
Unkindness of Ravens
Veiled One
 Read more

Going Wrong

Guy still believed that Leonora loved him, as she had when she was a young girl, when he led a street gang around London's Notting Hill Gate, a world away from her family home in a mews house in Holland Park. Leonora's mother in particular didn't care for her dark-looking boyfriend,...Read more

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

Jock Lewis was supposed to have died in that terrible train crash at Paddington. Minty, his girlfriend, received a letter from Great Western telling her so. But, curiously, the police haven't been in touch. And Jock has borrowed all her savings . . .

Zillah also got a letter from...Read more

A Demon In My View

Arthur Johnson doesn't look like a murderous psychopath; he is a mild-mannered man who has never known how to talk to women.

Years of loneliness has warped his mind, turning his desire for a woman's love and respect into a pathological need for carefully controlled violence....Read more

Dark Corners

When his father dies, Carl Martin inherits a house in an increasingly rich and trendy London neighborhood. Carl needs cash, however, so he rents the upstairs room and kitchen to the first person he interviews, Dermot McKinnon. That was colossal mistake number one. Mistake number two was...Read more

Live Flesh

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. It's hard to adjust to civilian life, but at least there's one blessing - he was never...Read more

Gallowglass

Saved from suicide by a mysterious stranger called Sandor, Little Joe becomes an abject servant to his rescuer's maniacal whims and a part of Sandor's plan to kidnap one of the world's most beautiful womenRead more

Crime After Crime

An anthology of psychological thrillers, whodunits, and suspense stories by popular mystery writers takes readers deep into dark hearts and twisted minds in stories by Anne Perry, Sara Paretsky, Ed McBain, Ruth Rendell, and others.Read more

King Solomon's Carpet

Living in a school-turned-boarding house, Jarvis encounters a cast of bizarre characters--including hawk trainer Jed, Jasper and the truant boys, and Alice, who has abandoned her babyRead more

Murder by the Glass

A collection of crime and mystery stories on the subject of drink and drinking. The authors featured include Edgar Allan Poe, Roald Dahl, Michael Gilbert, Geoffrey Household, Kingsley Amis, Somerset Maugham, Joan Aiken, A.A. Milne, Margery Allingham and Ruth Rendell.Read more

A Dark-Adapted Eye

Faith Severn, the niece of executed murderess Vera Hillyard, strives to protect her family from the terrible truth when writer Daniel Stewart begins to probe into the murder that took place thirty years earlierRead more