Ruth Rendell

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?....

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

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

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

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....

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....

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

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....

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

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

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

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'....

Alan Groombridge had a fantasy....

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

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....

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

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

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....

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

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