Listen free for 30 days
-
Simisola
- A Chief Inspector Wexford Mystery, Book 16
- Narrated by: Christopher Ravenscroft
- Series: Inspector Wexford, Book 16
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £19.69
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Road Rage
- A Chief Inspector Wexford Mystery, Book 17
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Nigel Anthony
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bypass is planned in Kingsmarkham, but before the protestors make their presence felt, the badly decomposed body of a young woman is discovered. Burden thinks he knows the identity of the murderer, but Wexford is not convinced.
-
-
Slightly disappointing
- By Ali H on 23-11-21
-
Harm Done
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Christopher Ravenscroft
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the day Lizzie came back from the dead, the police and her family and neighbours had already begun to search for her body. She had been missing for three days. A short while later, another young woman disappears, just as a convicted paedophile is released back into the community.
-
End in Tears
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Christopher Ravenscroft
- Length: 3 hrs and 14 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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... 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.
-
The Monster in the Box
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Christopher Ravenscroft
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never again set eyes on Eric Targo's short, muscular figure. And yet there he was, back in Kingsmarkham, still with that cocky, strutting walk.Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, a woman called Elsie Carroll had been found strangled in her bedroom. Although many still had their suspicions that her husband was guilty, no one was convicted.
-
A Sleeping Life
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: George Baker
- Length: 2 hrs and 44 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The body found under the hedge was that of a middle-aged woman, biggish and gaunt. The grey eyes were wide and staring, and in them Detective Chief Inspector Wexford thought he saw a sardonic gleam, a glare, even in death, of scorn. But that must have been his imagination, and imagination was almost all he had to go on. The woman was a stranger. Her handbag held little more than three keys on a ring and forty-two pounds in a new wallet.
-
Shake Hands for Ever
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: George Baker
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most people would have screamed. Mrs Hathall made no sound. She had seen death many times before, but she had never before seen a 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 and no suspect – all he had were his 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.
-
-
Great story, well told
- By sams247 on 27-04-17
-
Road Rage
- A Chief Inspector Wexford Mystery, Book 17
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Nigel Anthony
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bypass is planned in Kingsmarkham, but before the protestors make their presence felt, the badly decomposed body of a young woman is discovered. Burden thinks he knows the identity of the murderer, but Wexford is not convinced.
-
-
Slightly disappointing
- By Ali H on 23-11-21
-
Harm Done
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Christopher Ravenscroft
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the day Lizzie came back from the dead, the police and her family and neighbours had already begun to search for her body. She had been missing for three days. A short while later, another young woman disappears, just as a convicted paedophile is released back into the community.
-
End in Tears
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Christopher Ravenscroft
- Length: 3 hrs and 14 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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... 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.
-
The Monster in the Box
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Christopher Ravenscroft
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never again set eyes on Eric Targo's short, muscular figure. And yet there he was, back in Kingsmarkham, still with that cocky, strutting walk.Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, a woman called Elsie Carroll had been found strangled in her bedroom. Although many still had their suspicions that her husband was guilty, no one was convicted.
-
A Sleeping Life
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: George Baker
- Length: 2 hrs and 44 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The body found under the hedge was that of a middle-aged woman, biggish and gaunt. The grey eyes were wide and staring, and in them Detective Chief Inspector Wexford thought he saw a sardonic gleam, a glare, even in death, of scorn. But that must have been his imagination, and imagination was almost all he had to go on. The woman was a stranger. Her handbag held little more than three keys on a ring and forty-two pounds in a new wallet.
-
Shake Hands for Ever
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: George Baker
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most people would have screamed. Mrs Hathall made no sound. She had seen death many times before, but she had never before seen a 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 and no suspect – all he had were his 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.
-
-
Great story, well told
- By sams247 on 27-04-17
-
Wolf to the Slaughter
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: George Baker
- Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chief Inspector Wexford tries to solve a murder with no evidence, not even a body. Anita Margolis had vanished. There was no body, no crime - nothing more than an anonymous letter and the intriguing name of Smith. According to HQ, it wasn't to be a murder enquiry at all. In fact, Inspector Burden has no trouble seeing a pattern in the Margolis case. Anita was wealthy, flighty, and thoroughly immoral.
-
-
Poorly abridged
- By Saffy on 25-04-12
-
The Tree of Hands
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Isla Blair
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the writer of the Wexford novels and read by Isla Blair. Once, when Benet was about fourteen, they had been in a train together, alone in the carriage, and Mopsa had tried to stab her with a carving knife. Threatened her with it, rather. Benet had been wondering why her mother had brought such a large handbag with her, a red one that didn’t go with the clothes she was wearing. Mopsa had shouted and laughed and said wild things and then she had put the knife back in her bag.
-
-
Abridged!
- By Elvira Coot on 05-11-21
-
The Crocodile Bird
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eve and Liza, Mother and Daughter, live a quiet life in their remote home; a rustic gatehouse of a country mansion. At first glance their lives appear quite ordinary, except that Liza has almost no knowledge of the outside world, has never played with a child her own age and has witnessed her mother commit murder, on multiple occasions.
-
-
Unexpected
- By Slubberd on 11-02-17
-
Talking to Strange Men
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Christian Rodska
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Safe houses and secret message drops, double crosses and defections - it sounds like the stuff of sophisticated espionage, but these agents are only schoolboys engaged in harmless play. Not that John Creevey knows 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.
-
-
Gripping and ingenious
- By Craftaddict on 02-05-21
-
A Judgement in Stone
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Carole Hayman
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four members of the Coverdale family - George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles - died in the space of fifteen minutes on the 14th February, St Valentine's Day. Eunice Parchman, the housekeeper, shot them down on a Sunday evening while they were watching opera on television. Two weeks later she was arrested for the crime. But the tragedy neither began nor ended there...
-
-
I wonder if there's anyone she likes
- By Barbara on 25-05-19
-
The Saint Zita Society
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Carole Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dex works as a gardener for Dr Jefferson at his home on Hexam Place in Pimlico: an exclusive street 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 pub and air their grievances. When Dex is invited to one of these meetings, the others find that he is a strange man, ill at ease with human beings....
-
-
Disappointed again
- By Saffy on 27-12-12
-
The Rottweiler
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Nigel Anthony
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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' and the name stuck. The latest murder takes place very near Inez Ferry's antique shop in Marylebone. When the Rottweiler’s trinkets start showing up in the shop, suddenly, everyone Inez knows is a suspect, and the killer feels all too close.
-
-
The Rottweiler
- By Susan Random on 28-02-16
-
Adam and Eve Pinch Me
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Jan Francis
- Length: 3 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jock was supposed to have died in the Paddington train crash. Minty had received a letter from the railway company. But, curiously, the police hadn't been in touch. And Jock had gone off with all her savings. Then Jock's ghost starts reappearing to Minty: at home, at work, even in the cinema. He even touches her. Minty started to carry a knife. If he wasn't made of shadows, would he bleed?
-
-
Abridgded version, sadly
- By Anonymous User on 02-06-21
-
Vanity Dies Hard
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Eva Haddon
- Length: 5 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wealthy Alice Whittaker 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 the handsome Mr Fielding enters her life, ten years younger than Alice and they marry. But when Alice starts to feel sick -- a virus perhaps, something she just can't shake, her husband seems determined to keep her at home. Is he just being a doting husband who wants his wife to get better?
-
-
Loved this book
- By melissa on 19-11-15
-
Means of Evil and Other Stories
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Nigel Anthony
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Innocence is in the eye of the beholder.... A collection of short stories, ranging from crimes of passion and violence in Kingsmarkham to a bizarre murder in Yugoslavia, featuring the world-famous Detective Chief Inspector Wexford. A crime omnibus from the world's greatest living mystery writer, Ruth Rendell.
-
-
Ideal - stories to fit in when you are busy
- By Linda on 30-12-18
-
The Keys to the Street
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary’s life in a way she could never have imagined.
-
-
A Perfect Match
- By Olga the Owl on 15-11-12
-
Make Death Love Me
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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 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.
-
-
Make Death Love Me
- By Susan Random on 19-11-15
Summary
Only eighteen black people live in Kingsmarkham. One of them is Wexford's new Doctor, Raymond Akande. When the doctor's daughter, Melanie, goes missing, the Chief Inspector takes more than just a professional interest in the case.
Melanie, just down from university but unable to find a job, disappeared somewhere between the Benefit Office and the bus stop. Or at least no one saw her get on the bus when it came. According to her parents, Melanie was happy at home. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend but, until now, there had been no cause to worry about her. And no one liked to voice the suspicion that something might have happened, that Melanie might be dead...
More from the same
What listeners say about Simisola
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- SEA, Charente
- 14-01-15
Complex but Intriguing.....
Another first-rate crime mystery from Ruth Rendell, beautifully read by Christopher Ravenscroft. Twin themes of modern-day slavery and race-relations in a provincial town in the 90s are skilfully interwoven with the process of detection. A must for Wexford fans.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mahogany Gaspipes
- 14-08-22
Christopher Ravenscroft superb!
Others are very good but he is the best Inspector Wexford reader. He makes Wexford sound like George Baker.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ali M
- 06-08-22
A gripping but sad story
I enjoyed this book more than some of the earlier Wexford novels. Ruth Rendell seems to have decided to address the issue of race and modern slavery, perhaps addressing her earlier sometimes unfavourable descriptions of ethic minorities in her stories.
I find there are often too many characters in the Wexford novels which makes it more difficult to grasp who’s who when listening to an audio book, but the narrator made a good attempt at all the different characters and accents.
Listening to the story now is fascinating, as Ruth Rendell describes the changing face of the UK through the eyes of a small town in Sussex.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tanya
- 13-07-22
Wonderful Wexford Story
The storyline is wonderful but the narration of Wexford’s voice was a fly in the ointment
Well worth a listen.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jamickle
- 17-05-22
More than a detective story.
Ruth Rendell has shown through her writings that she is quite prepared to show her readers that in her efforts to tell a dark good story that without preaching she can introduce thought provoking issues that some are ignorant of. Another splendid tale of the gruff Wexford
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- jan Wills
- 30-04-22
good story but dated
usual good story but is dated. not as riveting as other Wexfords. nevertheless worth a read for a Rendell fan.
-
Overall
-
Story
- Jamie S.
- 29-04-22
a heading is required
a clumsy attempt to discuss racism in the UK. Don't want to say anymore but the review has a minimum word count
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Marvellous Maud
- 27-04-22
Good but not the best.
As usual, a good tale, but not quite as engaging as others in the series. It was sometimes hard to keep up with the plot, which had so many twists and turns, could be a little confusing and seemed to wrap up in a hurry at the end.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- DAVID G ROGERS
- 27-03-22
Excellent story perfectly read
I loved this. it was VERY well read, and the thinking of DCI Wexford was perfectly explored
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Juno Sobers
- 22-03-22
fantastic
absolutely great book hate the African accent and don't much like Wexford's accent but don't let the put you off listening to it
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Katherine
- 25-04-12
Very listenable
Good plot development - interesting characters - well written descriptions. Only criticism I have is that the narrator's voice for the main character is rather changeable. I think he is trying to copy Michael Caine's accent but it often doesn't work.