Ruth Rendell

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 that one...

Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn’t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair....

The massacre at Tancred House seems at first to be the work of a burglar, panicked into killing. But Chief Inspector Wexford believes there are links with the murder of a Kingsmarkham detective....

There were some things about Chief Inspector Wexford's trip to China that he could never have dreamt of....

All his life, for almost as far back as he could remember, Victor had had a phobia....

The first girl had a bite mark on her neck, but they traced the DNA to her boyfriend. But the tabloids got hold of the story and called the killer 'The Rottweiler'....

Concealed by a shroud of dirty brown velvet was what looked like a heap of rags....

With floods threatening his home, Chief Inspector Wexford already has his hands full when he learns that two local teenagers have gone missing ....

All he has to go on is his own intuitive suspicions. Was he becoming cynical and untrusting or was this one of the most ingenious crimes he had ever tackled?....

Philip Wardman had more than just the ordinary squeamishness where death was concerned....

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....

Mix Cellini (which he pronounces with an S rather than a C) is superstitious about the number 13 and has always felt dogged by ill-luck....

The man who had died was Ismay's stepfather, Guy....

There are only two things in life that interest Stanley: solving crossword puzzles, and getting his hands on his mother-in-law’s money....

No one would have described Manningtree Grove as fashionable....

Louise North doesn't care what the neighbors think. She lets her lover leave his car just outside her house in broad daylight....

With deceptive economy in these nine short stories, Ruth Rendell indicates hidden depths in ordinary events and creates a sense of profound unease....

Safe houses and secret message drops, double crosses and defections - it sounds like the stuff of sophisticated espionage....

The bleak expanse of Vangmoor was a dark, forbidding place. One victim had been found there, blonde, her face disfigured, her head shorn close to the scalp - killed without motive or mercy. Then a second woman went missing on the moor, and a sense of utter dread gripped the fifty local men who...

Inspektor Wexford steht vor einem Rätsel: Warum musste Margaret Parsons sterben? Die unscheinbare junge Hausfrau hatte keine Feinde – und doch wurde sie brutal erwürgt, ihre Leiche in einem abgelegenen Waldstück zurückgelassen.