Ruth Rendell

In a gloomy cellar, the figure of a beautiful, pale woman makes no move when the man advances on her from the shadows....

Chief Inspector Wexford finds nothing unusual in the disappearance of Rodney Williams, a husband and father who likely has run off with another woman. But when the man’s car and suitcase are discovered abandoned, can a body be far behind? Confounded by a string of violent stabbings, a strident...

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 the...

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....

Wexford is shopping for his wife’s birthday present when the body of a strangled woman is discovered nearby. Then his daughter is arrested for an anti-nuclear war demonstration, and a car bomb puts him in the hospital while a psychopathic killer is loose and bent on revenge...

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...

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?....

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'....

Senta Pelham is a mirror image of Flora, the lovely marble bust Philip fanaticized about for so long. But life, like art, is not always what its mere surface suggests. And Senta’s strange world of make-believe, where truth and falsehood are eerily interchangeable, soon draws Philip into a...

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....

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

Chief inspector 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.

Wealthy Alice Whittaker is known for her generosity, and when her friend Nesta vanishes Alice is determined to find her....

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

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

Few mystery writers can match Ruth Rendell’s ability to get inside the dark, tangled psyches of everyday criminals. Rendell takes a single emotion - in this case a sister’s all-consuming jealousy - and shows how even the most unsuspicious people are capable of the worst kind of horrors...

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....

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

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

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....