Ruth Rendells, eine Giganten des Spannungsgenres, letzter Roman ist eine düstere und atmosphärische Geschichte psychologischer Spannung.
Zum ersten Mal in seinem Leben verläuft für Carl alles nach Plan. Sein Romandebüt wird veröffentlicht, er hat ein Haus in Londons Stadtmitte geerbt, und er ist glücklich verliebt. Um jetzt noch für den nötigen Geldfluss zu sorgen, sucht er sich einen Untermieter, den er für einen wahren Glücksfall hält. Doch der vermeintlich zuvorkommende Dermot streift nachts durchs Haus, taucht im Dunkeln hinter Türen auf und durchwühlt Schränke und Schubladen.
Als er schließlich von einem tragischen Unglück in Carls Bekanntenkreis erfährt, setzt dies eine Kette verhängnisvoller Ereignisse in Gang ...
Ruth Rendell wurde 1930 in London geboren und lebte dort bis zu ihrem Tod 2015. Sie arbeitete als Journalistin, bevor sie sich ganz dem Schreiben von Romanen widmete. 1997 wurde sie mit dem Grand Master Award der Crime Writers' Association of America, dem renommiertesten Krimipreis, ausgezeichnet und darüber hinaus von Königin Elizabeth II. in den Adelsstand erhoben. Ruth Rendell ist auch unter dem Pseudonym Barbara Vine bekannt.
Full-cast dramatisations of seven of Ruth Rendell's tense psychological thrillers.
This collection includes:
Tracks 1-2 - The Bridesmaid: A beautiful stone statue and her living double lead Philip into a nightmare of obsession and murder.
Tracks 3-4 - Going Wrong: Besotted with his childhood sweetheart, Leonora, psychopathic Guy Curran will do anything to make her his.
Tracks 5 - 8 King Solomon's Carpet: London's Underground links a group of misfit housemates and is the catalyst for a devastating crime in this compelling tale, written under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.
Track 9 - People Don't Do Such Things: A suburban couple befriend a charismatic novelist, but their relationship soon slips into sinister territory.
Track 10 - The Fever Tree: On safari in South Africa, Ford and Tricia find the tensions in their marriage exacerbated by the unforgiving wilderness.
Track 11 - The Dreadful Day of Judgment: Clearing up an abandoned cemetery, John, Gilly and Marlon's personal demons come to the fore.
Track 12 - Thornapple: Poison enthusiast James becomes captivated by the ruthless Meribel on a visit to her wealthy aunt.
Among the casts of these seven suspenseful adaptations are Jamie Glover, Mark Strong, Reece Shearsmith, Paul Rhys, Danny Sapani and Juliet Aubrey.
A spectacularly compelling story of blackmail, accidental murders, and of one life's fateful unraveling from Ruth Rendell-"one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation" (People)-writing at her absolute best.When his father dies, Carl Martin, a philosophy graduate and struggling novelist, inherits a house in a trendy London neighborhood. Carl needs cash, however, so he rents the upstairs room and kitchen to the first person he interviews, Dermot McKinnon. That was colossal mistake number one. Mistake number two was keeping his father's bizarre collection of homeopathic "cures" that he found in the medicine cabinet, including a stash of controversial diet pills. Mistake number three was selling fifty of those diet pills to a friend, who is then found dead. Now Dermot seizes a nefarious opportunity and begins to blackmail Carl, followed by his refusal to pay rent, and a truly creepy invasion of Carl's space. Ingeniously weaving together two storylines that finally merge in one shocking turn, Ruth Rendell describes one man's spiral into darkness-and murder-as he falls victim to a diabolical foe he cannot escape. This is masterful storytelling that gets under your skin, brilliant psychological suspense from Ruth Rendell.
In this psychologically explosive story from "one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation" (People), the discovery of bones in a tin box sends shockwaves across a group of long-time friends.In the waning months of the second World War, a group of children discover an earthen tunnel in their neighborhood outside London. Throughout the summer of 1944-until one father forbids it-the subterranean space becomes their "secret garden," where the friends play games and tell stories. Six decades later, beneath a house on the same land, construction workers uncover a tin box containing two skeletal hands, one male and one female. As the discovery makes national news, the friends come together once again, to recall their days in the tunnel for the detective investigating the case. Is the truth buried among these aging friends and their memories? This impromptu reunion causes long-simmering feelings to bubble to the surface. Alan, stuck in a passionless marriage, begins flirting with Daphne, a glamorous widow. Michael considers contacting his estranged father, who sent Michael to live with an aunt after his mother vanished in 1944. Lewis begins remembering details about his Uncle James, an army private who once accompanied the children into the tunnels, and who later disappeared. In The Girl Next Door Rendell brilliantly shatters the assumptions about age, showing that the choices people make-and the emotions behind them-remain as potent in late life as they were in youth.
A female Vicar named Sarah Hussein is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham Vicarage. The gossipy cleaning woman who discovers her body, Maxine, happens to also be in the employ of retired Chief Inspector Wexford and his wife. When detective inspector Mike Burden calls him, Wexford, intrigued by the unusual circumstances of the murder, leaps at the chance to tag along with the investigators.
A single-mother to a teenage girl, Hussein was a woman working in a male-dominated profession. Moreover, she was of mixed race and working to modernize the church. Could racism or sexism played a factor in her murder?
As he searches the Vicar’s house with Buren, Wexford sees a book on her bedside table. Inside the book is a letter serving as a bookmark. Without thinking much, Wexford puts it into his pocket,
Wexford soon realizes he has made a grave error – the former policeman has taken away a piece of valuable evidence without telling anybody. What he finds inside begins to illuminate the murky past of Hussein. Is there more to her than meets the eye?
No Man’s Nightingale is the captivating twenty-fourth installment in Rendell’s masterful Wexford series, which has been delighting readers for almost half a century.
From three-time Edgar Award-winning mystery writer Ruth Rendell comes a captivating and expertly plotted tale of residents and servants on one block of a posh London street-and the deadly ways their lives intertwine.
Life in the well-manicured London locale of Hexam Place is not as placid and orderly as it appears. Behind the tranquil gardens and polished entryways, relationships between servants and their employers are set to combust.
Henry, the handsome valet to Lord Studley, is sleeping with both the Lord's wife and his university-age daughter. Montserrate, the Still family's lazy au pair, is helping to hide Mrs. Still's illicit affair with a television actor-for a small fee. June, the haughty housekeeper to a princess of dubious origin, is hard at work forming a "society" for servants to address complaints about their employers. Meanwhile, a disturbed gardener, Dex, believes a voice in his cellphone is giving him godlike instructions-that could endanger the lives of all who reside in Hexam Place.
A deeply observed and suspenseful update to the upstairs/downstairs genre, The St. Zita Society is Ruth Rendall at her incisive best.
Love and death are the principal players in these two BBC Radio full-cast dramatisations of chilling Ruth Rendell stories. In 'The Bridesmaid', when Philip embarks on an affair with Senta, his sister's bridesmaid, she reminds him of the stone statue he adored as a child. Yet Senta is married, and Philip's overwhelming aversion to violence leads indirectly to murder and horror as he is drawn into erotic but murderous complicity. Starring Jamie Glover and Rachel Lewis. In 'Going Wrong', natural born villain Guy Curran has youth, good looks and charm, but not the one thing he longs for: Leonora, the sophisticated girl he has loved since childhood. When Guy learns that she's about to get married, his growing obsession convinces him that if Leonora can't be his, nor can she be anyone else's - ever. Starring Peter Wingfield and Oona Beeson.
From 'the reigning queen of crime fiction' (Time Out), a sequel to A Sight for Sore Eyes, one of Rendell's most beloved novels'featuring the retired Inspector Wexford.
In the stunning climax to Rendell's classic A Sight for Sore Eyes, three bodies'two dead, one living'are entombed in an underground chamber beneath a picturesque London house. Twelve years later, when a manhole cover is pulled back, the house's new owner makes a grisly discovery. Only now, the number of bodies is four. How did somebody else end up in the chamber? And who knew of its existence?
With their own detectives at an impasse, police call on former Chief Inspector Wexford, now retired and living with his wife in London, to advise them on the unsolved murders. Wexford, missing the thrill of a good case, jumps at the chance to sleuth again. His dogged detective skills and knack for figuring out the criminal mind take him to London neighborhoods, posh and poor, as he follows a complex criminal trail back to the original murders.
But just as Wexford's case gets hot, a devastating family tragedy pulls Wexford back to Kingsmarkham, and for the first time in his life, Wexford finds himself transforming from investigator into victim. Masterfully plotted, The Vault will satisfy both longtime Wexford fans and new Rendell readers.
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.The Anglian-Victoria bank was robbed and both manager and cashier disappeared.ln place of the dull and dreary repetit!on that had once existed, there came a brutal, chilling nightmare that might never, never end.
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...
Stephen Whalby loves to walk the moor. It is a dark and forbidding place, but it is his.
When the body of a young blonde woman is found there, her face horrifically disfigured, the victim of a merciless murderer, his beloved moor is tainted with suspicion and terror.
Then a second woman goes missing on the moor and Stephen watches as the search party make their way across the treacherous murder scene. Not to be usurped by a killer or a victim; he, and only he, is the master of the moor.
Martin Urban is a quiet bachelor with a comfortable life, free of worry and distractions. When he unexpectedly comes into a small fortune, he decides to use his newfound wealth to help out those in need. Finn also leads a quiet life, and comes into a little money of his own.
Normally, their paths would never have crossed. But Martin's ideas about who should benefit from his charitable impulses yield some unexpected results, and soon the good intentions of the one become fatally entangled with the mercenary nature of the other. In the Lake of Darkness, Ruth Rendell takes the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished to a startling, haunting conclusion.
