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A Demon in My View

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A Demon in My View

By: Ruth Rendell
Narrated by: Julian Glover
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In a gloomy cellar, the figure of a beautiful, pale woman makes no move when the man advances on her from the shadows, puts his hands around her neck and strangles her. Arthur Johnson is a mild-mannered, shy man who has never known how to talk to women. His resulting loneliness has twisted his yearning for love and respect into a carefully constructed predilection for violence and control. On the floor below him, Anthony Johnson, a scholar studying psychopathic personalities is about to stumble - quite literally - upon one of Arthur's many secrets.

©1976 Ruth Rendell (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Crime Thrillers Modern Detectives Mystery Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense Traditional Detectives Fiction Exciting
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Critic reviews

  • Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award, 1976
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very satisfying, character development is impressive. nice romantic back story and good tidy ending.

as always, a great listen.

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Entertaining story but many of the racist references to non-white people (although probably normal at the time of writing in the 70s) felt very uncomfortable.
Also the narrator’s Jamaican accent is so bad I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It is like a mix of Indian and Welsh and again quite offensive. Would be best if the narrator just used his normal voice rather than a poor caricature.

Entertaining but dated and racist

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a ‘West Indian’ accent from somewhere between India and South Wales, and a fair sprinkling of sexist stuff especially in the Taiwanese woman’s characterisation and treatment. Of it’s time? Certainly. Many of Ruth R’s books have this tendency, but maybe the story redeems them for many readers.

Racist assumptions with

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The build up to the final scene is jaw dropping. Hearing and understanding is one side but believing it is a different thing altogether. The reader knows and understands very early what nobody else seem to see not even the experts. But unbelievably this is of no avail as the story spirals out of control and even when the end is near there seem to be another escape possible after all. The end final came but not as expected in a last twist. Typically Ruth Rendel the tension and suspense is building and building and the end is unexpected but satisfactory. In between we learn a lot about human behaviour and psyche and all people involved are taken apart very knowledgable and observant with contempt and wit and not without a good dose of sarcasm. What irony that all attempts to avoid murderous actions seem to be triggering the exact opposite and the hapless attempts of social interaction cause maximum anti social behaviour and derail everybody’s lives in the follow up. The descriptions are so accurate that the reader feels right in the middle of it, gets sucked in and still is helpless to do more then watch and duck. This was a story I’d never read before and I’m glad I didn’t dismiss it this time.

What a page turner

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you won't be able to put this down! Rendell creates interesting characters that intermingle throughout. One moment early on stops you in your tracks and this partly dictates the main character's behaviour in later pages. The ending is PERFECT ! She links various themes that have been running throughout and brings them together in the final chapters, very difficult to guess the final outcome, she delivers an amazing end to a story of intrigue, a tremendous read!

Epic thriller!!

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