Inspector Wexford is called in when the body of a young woman, strangled with her own silk scarf, turns up in the Montfort family vault in a London cemetery
A notorious paedophile is released back into the community. The residents of the Muriel Campden Estate are up in arms, and even prepared to take the law into their own hands . . .
Chief Inspector Wexford is not only concerned very personally with the effects of violence and prejudice, but is involved with a new programme to help victims of domestic violence. And his daughter, Sylvia, has come to work nearby in a refuge for battered women. Her marriage is also in difficulties, although her husband has never raised a hand to her. They are merely incompatible.
Other women in Kingsmarkham are not so lucky, and, after those early disappearances, two far more serious crimes are committed which will affect the lives and attitudes of police and public alike.
On a sultry August evening, the bloody body of a middle-aged woman is discovered beneath a hedge by a small boy.
There are only two things that surprise Wexford about the murder scene. One, that the only contents of the woman's handbag are some keys and a wallet containing nothing but some money. And two, how even in death, her deathly grey eyes possess a scornful glare.
The woman turns out to be Rhoda Comfrey, but there's no murder weapon, no apparent motive, and no one who actually cares she's died. Wexford's only hunch is that the clues to her murder must lie in her solitary London life. But her existence there becomes frustratingly impossible to trace.
What kind of a person would kidnap two children? That is the question that haunts Wexford when a five-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl disappear from the village of Kingsmarkham. When a child's body turns up at an abandoned country home one search turns into a murder investigation and the other turns into a race against time. Filled with pathos and terror, passion, bitterness, and loss, No More Dying Then is Rendell at her most chillingly astute. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.
A mutilated body found at a rock festival. In spite of dire predictions, the rock festival in Kingsmarkham seemed to be going off without a hitch, until the hideously disfigured body is discovered in a nearby quarry. And soon Wexford is investigating the links between a local girl gone bad and a charismatic singer who inspires an unwholesome devotion in his followers. Some Lie and Some Die is a devilishly absorbing novel, in which Wexford's deductive powers come up against the aloof arrogance of pop stardom. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.
The search for the body commenced. Then the victim walked into town. Behind the picture-postcard facade of Kingsmarkham lies a community rife with violence, betrayal, and a taste for vengeance. When sixteen-year-old Lizzie Cromwell reappears no one knows where she has been, including Lizzie herself. Inspector Wexford thinks she was with a boyfriend. But the disappearance of a three-year-old girl casts a more ominous light on events. And when the public's outrage turns toward a recently released pederast and another suspect turns up stabbed to death, Wexford must try to unravel the mystery before any more bodies appear, and before a mob of local vigilantes metes out a rough justice to their least favorite suspect. In Harm Done , the violence is near at hand, and evil lies just a few doors down the block.
