| RUTH RENDELL - PSYCHOLOGICAL MYSTERIES | ||
| YEAR |
TITLE |
|
| 1965 |  |
TO FEAR A PAINTED DEVIL: 'The whole
thing was so funny really. Patrick just dying like that - from a few
wasp stings. I expect you all think I've got a very suspicious mind,
but I can't help thinking it was .. .' She paused for effect and sipped
her gin. 'Well, it was fishy. Wasn't it?' Almost everyone in Linchester
had hated Patrick Selby, including his wife - and all with good cause.
There was almost no one who had been at that fateful party who wouldn't
have been happy to see Patrick Selby dead. But was that enough to
assume murder? And if so, which of all the people Patrick Selby had
caused to suffer was the person desperate enough to go one step further
than just wishing him dead? R81 RR89
|
| 1965 |  |
VANITY DIES HARD (aka IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH): Who
would have believed that Alice
Whittaker's life could change? She was thirty-seven, rich but dowdy,
with no career. Her life a lonely failure, she had got by with the one
thing she did have: money. Then, suddenly, Alice meets and marries the
handsome Andrew Fielding, years younger than herself - and not even the
whispered gossip of friends can destroy her happiness. Or so she
thinks. But just as duddenly as Andrew comes into Alice's life, her
beautiful friend Nesta vanishes from it. Nesta leaves behind a broken
trail of questions and confused clues that lead Alice from the safe
surface of the everyday and into the darker world below, where nothing
is as it seems and where anything can be done by anyone - even murder. R86
RR89 |
| 1968 |  |
THE SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH: It was
his third visit to the gloomy house on Orchard Drive. Each time he
parked in the same place, each time he carried a briefcase, and each
time Louise North greeted him at the door. Susan Townsend was the only
resident with no interest in the affair going on next door or the
neighbourhood gossip about it. Yet it was Susan who found the bodies of
the lovers, locked not in passion but in death. And Susan whose own
life would be imperilled by a monstrous crime far beyond the imaginings
of the vilest tongues. R88 RR89 RR96 |
| 1971 |  |
ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN: There are only
two things in life that interest Stanley: solving crossword puzzles,
and getting his hands on his mother-in-law's money. For twenty years,
nearly all his adult life, the puzzles have been his only pleasure; his
mother-in-law's money his only dream. And in all those years it has
never once occurred to Stanley that she would try to outsmart him and
the money might never be his. Until now. It is only now that Stanley,
so clever at misleading double-meanings and devious clues, decides to
construct a puzzle of his own - and so give death a helping hand. R80
RR92
RR03 |
| 1974 |  |
THE FACE OF TRESPASS: Two years ago
he had been a promising young novelist. Now he survived - you could
hardly call it living - in a near-derelict cottage with only an
unhooked telephone and his own obsessive thoughts for company. Two
years of loving Drusilla - the bored, rich, unstable girl with
everything she needed, and a husband she wanted dead. The affair was
over. But the long slide into deception and violence had just begun ...R81
RR89
RR98 |
| 1976 |  |
A
DEMON IN MY VIEW: Her white face, beautiful, unmarked by any
flaw of skin or feature, stared blankly back at him. He fancied that
she had cringed, her slim body pressing further into the wall behind
her. He didn't speak He had never known how to talk to women. There was
only one thing he had ever been able to do to women and, advancing now,
smiling, he did it. Then, when it was all over, he straightened her
against the wall so that she would be ready to die for him again. It
was the best thing in his life, just knowing she was there, waiting
until the next time ... But one day she wasn't waiting, wasn't there ...R78
RR86
RR?
|
| 1976 |
 |
THE
FALLEN
CURTAIN and
Other
Stories:
A collection of Ruth Rendell mysteries. A wife plots her husband's
psychological destruction - then his murder; a son is ruined by his
mother's obsession; a man marries the woman he rescues from suicide,
only to become the victim of her obsessiveness; and a family feud
brings unimaginable horror. THE FALLEN CURTAIN; PEOPLE DON’T DO SUCH
THINGS; A BAD HEART; YOU CAN’T BE TOO CAREFUL; THE DOUBLE; THE VENUS
FLY TRAP; THE CLINGING WOMAN; THE VINEGAR MOTHER; THE FALL OF A COIN;
ALMOST HUMAN; DIVIDED WE STAND. R82 |
| 1977 |  |
A JUDGEMENT IN STONE: 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... R80 |
| 1978 |
 |
THE
NEW
GIRLFRIEND and
Other Stories: Murder, perversion, corruption,
blackmail, secret terrors
that lead to unspeakable acts, hidden fears that erupt in irrational
violence. All these, of course, are part of someone else's world.They
happen out there, far from the ordinary streets and ordinary people who
live in your town, your neighbourhood. They have nothing to do with the
everyday lives of people like you. Or do they? THE NEW
GIRLFRIEND; A DARK BLUE PERFUME; THE
ORCHARD WALLS; HARE’S HOUSE; BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION; THE WHISTLER; THE
CONVOLVULUS CLOCK; LOOPY; FEN HALL; FATHER’S DAY; THE GREEN ROAD TO
QUEPHANDA. R87 RR? |
| 1979 |  |
MAKE DEATH LOVE ME: Alan Groombridge
is married to a woman he doesn't like, is a bank manager of a tiny
branch, and is doomed to a life of boredom and tedious routine. All
that saves him is a fantasy of stealing enough of the bank's money for
just one year of freedom... R81 RR82 |
| 1980 |  |
THE LAKE OF DARKNESS: 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. R80
RR82 |
| 1980 |  |
TALKING TO STRANGE MEN: The messages
were coming in thick and fast. Coded messages that John Creevey should
never have seen. Was it a major spy ring? A drugs gang? A protection
racket? Whatever, to John Creevey the messages were a lifeline ... a
means of getting back his wife and perhaps a way to harm the man who
had seduced her away from him.R88 RR93 |
| 1980 |
 |
THE
COPPER
PEACOCK and
Other
Stories: Bernard untied the ribbon and took off the paper.
Inside the box, on a piece of cotton wool, lay a metal object about six
inches long and an inch wide. Its shaft was flat like the blade of a
knife and, attached to a hook on the top which curved backwards in a
U-shape, was a facsimile of a peacock with tail spread fan-wise, the
whole executed in beaten copper and a mosaic of blue, green and purple
glass chips. To Bernard it looked at first like some piece of cheap
jewellery, a woman's hair ornament or clip. He registered its tawdry
ugliness, felt at a loss for words. What was it? He looked up at her.
"It's a bookmark, isn't it?" She spoke with intense earnestness. "You
put it in your book to show where you've got to. " Bernard has borrowed
a friend's flat to finish writing his latest biography. At home with
Ann and the two children life was chaotic. But here he could spread
himself around. And then there was Judy. She came to clean three times
a week. She was scrupulously tidy. Bernard looked forward to her
presence. It came as something of a shock, on his thirty-fifth
birthday, when she gave him the copper peacock. Had she offered
herself, perhaps he might have been able to help, to save her life... A
PAIR OF YELLOW LILIES; PAPERWORK; MOTHER'S HELP; LONG LIVE THE QUEEN;
DYING HAPPY; THE COPPER PEACOCK; WEEDS; THE FISH SITTER; AN UNWANTED
WOMAN (DCI Wexford). R91 |
| 1982 |
 |
MASTER OF THE MOOR: 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. Then a second woman went
missing on the moor, and a sense of utter dread gripped the fifty local
men who searched for her. Someone watched them in that treacherous
place. Was he a killer? Or was he merely angry that a killer had
usurped him? For he, and only he, was Master of the Moor...R82
RR88 |
| 1982 |
 |
THE
FEVER
TREE and
Other
Stories: In this collection of eleven stories, murder is
committed for reasons of fear, jealously, cupidity, and out of sheer
compulsion, while the settings include an African game park, a sinister
ruined cemetery, an East Anglian seaside resort, and the gloomy
purlieus of Epping Forest. THE FEVER TREE; THE DREADFUL DAY OF
JUDGEMENT;A GLOWING FUTURE; AN OUTSIDE INTEREST; A CASE OF COINCIDENCE;
THORNAPPLE; MAY AND JUNE; A NEEDLE FOR THE DEVIL; FRONT SEAT; PAINTBOX
PLACE. R83 |
| 1984 |  |
THE TREE OF HANDS: Once when Benet
was about fourteen they had been alone in a train carriage together -
and Mopsa had tried to stab her with a carving knife. It was now some
time since Benet had seen her mad mother. So when Mopsa arrived at the
airport looking drab and colourless in a dowdy grey suit, Benet tried
not to hate her. But then the tragic death of a child begins a chain of
deception, kidnap and murder ...R85 RR02 |
| 1984 |  |
THE KILLING DOLL: The winter before
he was sixteen, Pup sold his soul to the devil. He wasn't quite sure
what he was going to get in exchange. For the time being, all he asked
for was to be happy, and to grow a bit taller. Even though she was
older than Pup, Dolly was always in awe of her brother. More and more,
she wanted to believe that he had occult powers and could do anything.
Magic could remove the birthmark from her face and make her normal.
Magic could kill their wicked stepmother, Myra. Pup laughs when Dolly
shows him an effigy of Myra: a rag doll, about fifteen inches high,
with knitted nylon skin and rust-coloured wool hair. Dolly sticks it
full of pins. Myra dies... R84
|
| 1986 |  |
LIVE FLESH: Why? Why did he do it?
Why had it happened? What sort of fiend was he? Why should he, Victor
Jenner, the child of happily married, middle-class parents, succumb to
such violent rages? Why should he have needed to make motiveless
attacks on women? Victor didn't know. But Victor did know that the last
ten years - the years in prison - had been a mistake. He had never
intended to rape the girl. He had never intended to harm anyone. It had
all been an accident. In fact, his life had been a series of accidents,
one mistake leading to the next. Now, out of prison at last, Victor
still isn't free. The past holds him so he can't go forward. So Victor
goes back - and begins a new chain of accidents, a new string of tragic
mistakes.R87 RR89 RR01 |
| 1987 |  |
HEARTSTONES: In a college town two
schoolgirls live with their widowed father Luke, who is a gentle well-
educated man, meticulous and orderly. Elvira and Spinny are watchful
however. For Luke plans to remarry - and has chosen Mary Leonard,
another academic, who threatens to supplant the girls in their father's
affections. The girls are impressionable: Elvira reads Gothic tales and
is much taken with Edgar Allan Poe; while Spinny fears ghosts, and even
encounters them in the corridors of the house. But soon the threat to
their world is removed - when scaffolding rises up the west front of
the cathedral, Mary Leonard falls to her death. Hardly an accident, but
just who is to blame? R88 RR90
|
| 1989 |  |
THE BRIDESMAID: Violent death
fascinates people. It upset Philip. He had a phobia about it. Left to
himself, he would have taken no interest in the disappearance of
Rebecca Neave. But his sister, Fee, knew her at school. Murder was
suspected. But no body had been found ... When Fee got married, it was
Philip who gave her away, Their father was dead. He had been an
inveterate gambler who left little behind to be remembered by - except
perhaps a curious copy of a Renaissance statue, known as the Farnese
Flora. He had acquired it after losing a bet to his wife on their
honeymoon in Italy. Senta Pelham was one of Fee's five bridesmaids. She
was slender, pale, with almost colourless eyes. But, for Philip, the
most remarkable thing about her, the most exciting thing, was her
uncanny resemblance to Flora. That Senta should be attracted to him
came initially as a delicious surprise to Philip. But soon the erotic
intensity of their relationship threatened to engulf him utterly. She
was like no one he had ever known. Senta tantalised and unsettled him.
He didn't know what to believe - about her past, her present, even her
avowed love. He only knew that he had entered into a relationship which
required a murder to prove that it was real. R89 |
| 1990 |  |
GOING WRONG: She always had lunch
with him on Saturdays. This always happened, it was an absolute, unless
one of them was away. Guy still believed that Leonora loved him, as she
had when she was a young girl, when he led a street gang round the
grubby streets of London's Notting Hill Gate. They were brilliant
shoplifters then, and inveterate smokers of marijuana. Guy Curran's
family lived in a block of council flats. Leonora's had a mews house in
Holland Park. Her mother in particular did not care for Leonora's dark,
good-looking boyfriend, especially when she found out how he made his
money. If anything, Guy's obsession with Leonora increased as the years
passed, and as they grew apart. He always believed she would come back
to him. But this was a romantic fantasy. She told him so. Life was not
like a fairy story. But Guy could not, would not accept the truth. It
created in him a murderous madness ... R90 RR92
|
| 1993 |  |
THE CROCODILE BIRD: 'The world began
to fall apart at nine in the evening. Not at five when it happened, nor
at half-past six when the policemen came and Eve said to go into the
little castle and not show herself, but at nine when all was quiet and
it was dark outside.' When her mother, Eve, tells Liza that she must
leave their remote home, the gatehouse of a country mansion, Liza is
terrified. Although seventeen years of age, she has never been on a bus
or a train, has never even played with a child of her own age. She has
almost no knowledge of the world - a world described by her mother as
evil and destructive. But their strange, enclosed life together is
over. Because Eve has killed a man, and he is not the first. With
£100 in cash, Liza is cast adrift. However, she is not alone.
There is one particular secret that she has kept from her mother - her
love affair with a young man who worked as a gardener in the big house.
And with him, gradually, Liza learns about the world, about herself,
and must come to terms with the possibility that the murderous violence
of her mother may be present in her. R93 RR06/11 |
| 1995 |
 |
BLOOD LINES and other stories: Behind the quiet patterns of everyday life, lie the frailties and desires, the deceptions and guilty secrets of ordinary men and women. In this powerful new collection of long and short stories Ruth Rendell probes their lives with unerring and disturbing insight. LIZZIE'S LOVER; SHREDS AND SLIVERS; BURNING END; THE MAN WHO WAS THE GOD OF LOVE; THE CARER; EXPECTATIONS; CLOTHES; UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS; IN ALL HONESTY; THE STRAWBERRY TREE; BLOOD LINES (DCI Wexford). R97 |
| 1996 |  |
THE KEYS TO THE STREET: 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. Located in the area around Regent's Park, Ruth Rendell creates an atmospherically charged universe, where a young woman's life is in danger both from the middle class world she knows and another world of the dispossessed and deranged. R96 |
| 1998 |  |
THORNAPPLE: Originally published in
the collection THE FEVER TREE and Other Stories. R82 |
| 1998 |  |
A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES: 'Lying in bed
he thought about Francine as she had been, seated in front of his
mirror, swathed in stiff silk, her reflected face looking gravely back
at her real face. She must easily be the most beautiful girl in the
world. A sight for sore eyes. Alfred Chance had once used that
expression and it had stuck in his mind. About an object, though, not a
person. It meant that looking at beauty took away pain and hurt and
made you better. Francine made him better and his eyes were sore when
they couldn't feast on her.' Neither his mother nor his father took
much notice of Teddy Brex. No one ever cuddled him, or played with him
or talked to him. The only person he could vaguely relate to was Alfred
Chance, who lived next door, and made beautiful things in his workshop.
People, Teddy suspected, were uniformly vile and rotten, vastly
inferior to things. Objects never let you down. When Francine Hill was
discovered by her father, sitting by the body of her mother, her skirt
red with blood, she was mute. Not until nine months after the murder
did she manage to speak, but she could not tell the police or her
father anything to help track down the killer. Damaged children grow up
in different ways. Some can shuffle off the horrors of the past, others
perhaps cannot change who they are, or will never know how. Teddy Brex
became a handsome young man, Francine was beautiful. But it was death
that brought them together... R99 RR04 RR08/11 |
| 2000 |
 |
PIRANHA
TO
SCURFY and Other
Stories: The long title story is about a man whose life, in a
sense, is a book. There are shelves in every room, packed with titles
which Ambrose Ribbon has checked pedantically for mistakes of grammar
and fact. Life for Ribbon, without his mother now, is
lonely and obsessive. He still keeps her dressing table exactly as she
had left it, the wardrobe door always open so that her clothes can be
seen inside, and her pink silk nightdress folded on the bed ... There
is one book too that he associates particularly with her - volume VIII
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Piranha to Scurfy. It marked a very
significant moment in their relationship. In the other stories, Ruth
Rendell deals with a variety of themes, some macabre, some vengeful,
some mysterious, all precisely observed. High Mysterious Union,
explores a strange, erotic universe in a dream- like corner of rural
England, and illustrates very atmospherically what range Ruth Rendell
has as a writer. PIRANHA TO SCURFY; COMPUTER SÉANCE; FAIR
EXCHANGE; THE WINK; CATAMOUNT; WALTER’S LEG; THE PROFESSIONAL; THE
BEACH BUTLER; THE ASTRONOMICAL SCARF; HIGH MYSTERIOUS UNION; MYTH. R00
|
| 2001 |  |
ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME: 'Ghosts
in stories are grey, like the people in black and white television, or
else see- through, but this one had short dark hair and a brown neck
and a black leather jacket. Minty didn't have to see its face to know
it was her late fiancé, Jock.' Jock Lewis was supposed to have
died in the Paddington train crash. Minty had received a letter from
Great Western. But, curiously, the police hadn't been in touch. And
Jock had gone off with all her savings. Then there was Zilla. She had
been married to a man called Jerry Leach. She had also received a
letter from the railway company that said her husband was dead. She
didn't really believe the story, but chose not to mention her doubts to
James Melcombe-Smith, an up-and- coming Conservative MP, who was
proposing a marriage of convenience ... Fiona was a successful banker.
Jeff Leigh had appeared on the scene before that terrible rail crash in
August. Although he never seemed to be in work and borrowed money from
her, she loved him. There were other women too, unknown to each other,
who had relationships with a dark-haired man, who, after a little
while, would disappear completely from their lives. Jock's ghost
reappeared to Minty at home, at work, in the cinema. He even touched
her. Minty started to carry a knife. If he wasn't made of shadows,
would he bleed? R01 |
| 2003 |  |
THE ROTTWEILER: The first girl had a
bite mark on her neck, but the police traced the DNA to her boyfriend.
Nevertheless, when the tabloids got hold of the story, they called the
killer 'The Rottweiler', and the name stuck. The latest body was
discovered very near Inez Ferry's antique shop in Marylebone. Someone
spotted a shadowy figure running away past the station, but couldn't
say for sure if it was a man or a woman. There were only two other
clues. The murderer seemed to have a preference for strangling his
victims and then removing something personal - like a cigarette lighter
or a necklace ... Since her actor husband died, too early into their
marriage, Inez supplemented her modest income by taking in tenants
above the shop. The unpredictably obsessive activities of 'The
Rottweiler' would exert a profound influence on this heterogeneous
little community, especially when the suspicion began to emerge that
one of them might be a homicidal maniac. R03 RR06/11 |
| 2004 |  |
THIRTEEN STEPS DOWN: Mix Cellini
(which he pronounces with an 'S' rather than a 'C') is superstitious
about the number thirteen and has always felt dogged by ill-luck. In St
Blaise House where he lives, there are thirteen steps down to the
landing below his rooms, which he keeps spick and span in marked
contrast to the rest of the place. His landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, was
born there, and lives her life almost exclusively through her library,
blind to the neglect and decay around her. The Notting Hill
neighbourhood has changed radically over the last fifty years, and 10
Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed a series
of foul murders, has been torn down. Mix is obsessed with the life of
Christie and his small library is composed entirely of books on the
subject. He has also developed a passion for a beautiful model who
lives nearby - a woman who would not look at him twice. Both landlady
and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes
into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes. R04 |
| 2006 |  |
THE WATER'S LOVELY: 'Weeks went by
when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring
it back or it would return in a dream. The dreams began in the same
way. She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following
Heather's lead through the bedroom to what was on the other side, not a
bathroom in the dream but a chamber floored and walled in marble. In
the middle of it was a glassy lake. The white thing in the water
floated towards her, its face submerged, and her mother said, absurdly,
"Don't look!'" The dead man was Ismay's stepfather, Guy. Nine years on,
she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham.
But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother
lives upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy
drowned, has disappeared. Ismay works in public relations, and Heather
in catering. They get on well. They always have. They never discuss the
changes to the house, still less what happened that August day ... But
even lives as private as these, where secrets hang in the air like
dust, intertwine with other worlds and other individuals. And, with
painful inevitability, the truth will emerge. R06 |
| 2006 |
 |
THE THIEF: Stealing things from
people who had upset her was something Polly did quite a lot. There was
her Aunt Pauline; a girl at school; a boyfriend who left her. And there
was the man on the plane ... Humiliated and scared, by a total
stranger, Polly does what she always does. She steals something. But
she never could have imagined that her desire for revenge would have
such terrifying results. R06 |
| 2008 |  |
PORTOBELLO: The Portobello area of
West London has a rich personality - vibrant, brilliant in colour,
noisy, with graffiti that approach art, bizarre and splendid. An
indefinable edge to it adds a spice of danger. There is nothing safe
about Portobello. Eugene Wren inherited an art gallery from his father
near an arcade that now sells cashmere, handmade soaps and children's
clothes. But he decided to move to a more upmarket site in Kensington
Church Street. Eugene was fifty, with prematurely white hair. He was,
perhaps, too secretive for his own good. He also had an addictive
personality. But he had cut back radically on his alcohol consumption
and had given up cigarettes. Which was just as well, considering he was
going out with a doctor. For all his good intentions, though, there was
something he didn't want her to know about. On a shopping trip one day,
Eugene, quite by chance, came across an envelope containing money. He
picked it up. For some reason, rather than report the matter to the
police, he wrote a note and stuck it up on a lamp post near his house:
'Found in Chepstow Villas, a sum of money between eighty and a hundred
and sixty pounds. Anyone who has lost such a sum should apply to the
phone number below.' This note would link the lives of a number of very
different people - each with their obsessions, problems, dreams and
despairs. And through it all the hectic life of Portobello would bustle
on. R08 |
| 2010 |  |
TIGERLILY'S ORCHIDS: When Stuart
Font decides to throw a house-warming party in his new flat, he invites
all the people in his building. After some deliberation, he even
includes the unpleasant caretaker and his wife. There are a few other
genuine friends on the list, but he definitely does not want to extend
the invitation to his girlfriend, Claudia, as that might involve asking
her husband. The party will be one that everyone remembers. But not for
the right reasons. All the occupants of Lichfield House are about to
experience a dramatic change in their lives ... Living opposite, in
reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman, christened
Tigerlily by Stuart. As though from some strange urban fairytale, she
emerges to exert a terrible spell. And Mr and Mrs Font, Stuart's
worried parents, will have even more cause for concern about their
handsome but hopelessly naive son. R10 |