Ruth Rendell, página 2 de 13

'Someone had told Dex that the Queen lived in Victoria. So did he, but she had a palace and he had one room in a street off Warwick Way. Still he liked the idea that she was his neighbour.' Dex works as a gardener for Dr Jefferson at his home on Hexam Place in Pimlico: an exclusive street of white-painted stucco Georgian houses inhabited by the rich, and serviced by the not so rich. The hired help, a motley assortment of au pairs, drivers and cleaners, decide to form the St Zita Society (Zita was the patron saint of domestic servants) as an excuse to meet at the local pub and air their grievances. When Dex is invited to attend one of these meetings, the others find that he is a strange man, seemingly ill at ease with human beings. These first impressions are compounded when they discover he has recently been released from a hospital for the criminally insane, where he was incarcerated for attempting to kill his own mother. Dex's most meaningful relationship seems to be with his mobile phone service provider, Peach, and he interprets the text notifications and messages he receives from the company as a reassuring sign that there is some kind of god who will protect him. And give him instructions about ridding the world of evil spirits...Accidental death and pathological madness cohabit above and below stairs in Hexam Place.

This is the dazzling new novel from Ruth Rendell. When the bones of two severed hands are discovered in a box, an investigation into a long buried crime of passion begins. And a group of friends, who played together as children, begin to question their past. 'For Woody, anger was cold. Cold and slow. But once it had started it mounted gradually and he could think of nothing else. He knew he couldn't stay alive while those two were alive. Instead of sleeping, he lay awake in the dark and saw those hands. Anita's narrow white hand with the long nails painted pastel pink, the man's brown hand equally shapely, the fingers slightly splayed.' Before the advent of the Second World War, beneath the green meadows of Loughton, Essex, a dark network of tunnels has been dug. A group of children discover them. They play there. It becomes their secret place. Seventy years on, the world has changed. Developers have altered the rural landscape. Friends from a half-remembered world have married, died, grown sick, moved on or disappeared. Work on a new house called Warlock uncovers a grisly secret, buried a lifetime ago, and a weary detective, more preoccupied with current crimes, must investigate a possible case of murder. In all her novels, Ruth Rendell digs deep beneath the surface to investigate the secrets of the human psyche. The interconnecting tunnels of Loughton in The Girl Next Door lead to no single destination. But the relationships formed there, the incidents that occurred, exert a profound influence - not only on the survivors but in unearthing the true nature of the mysterious past.

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. Eugene Wren inherited an art gallery from his father near an arcade that now sells cashmere, handmade soaps and children's clothes. El barrio de Portobello, situada en el oeste de Londres, tiene una personalidad muy rica y distintiva: vibrante, colorida, ruidosa, llena de graffitis que podrían figurar en catálogos de arte, estrafalaria y espléndida Y posee un indefinible toque que le añade una pizca de picante peligro a todo ello...

Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury - a human hand. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped in a purple cotton sheet. The post mortem can not reveal the precise cause of death. The only clue is a crack in one of the dead man's ribs. Although it covers a relatively short period of time, the police computer stores a long list of missing persons. Men, women and children disappear at an alarming rate, something like 500 every day nationwide. So Wexford knows he is going to have a job on his hands to identify the corpse. And then, only about twenty yards away from the woodland burial site, in the cellar of a disused cottage, another body is found. The detection skills of Wexford, Burden and the other investigating officers of the Kingsmarkham Police Force are tested to the utmost to discover whether the murders are connected and to track down whoever is responsible.

Susan Townsend hat sich nie richtig in dem Londoner Vorort eingelebt, in dem die Frauen scheinbar keine andere Beschäftigung haben, als Klatsch zu verbreiten. Aber auch ihr kommt der Besucher ihrer Nachbarin Louise North verdächtig vor. Doch dann bittet Louise sie um ihre Hilfe, und Susan wird in Ereignisse hineingezogen, die ihr Leben schlagartig verändern...01Ruth Rendell, auch unter dem Pseudonym Barbara Vine bekannt, ist mit ihren zahlreichen Romanen eine der ganz großen englischen Autorinnen. Dreimal schon erhielt sie den "Edgar-Allen-Poe-Preis" und zweimal den "Golden Dagger Award" für den besten Kriminalroman des Jahres. 1997 wurde sie mit dem Grand Masters Award der Crime Writers Association of America, dem renommiertesten Krimipreis überhaupt, ausgezeichnet und darüber hinaus von Königin Elizabeth in den Adelsstand erhoben. Ruth Rendell wurde 1930 in einem Londoner Vorort geboren. Sie arbeitete zunächst als Journalistin, bis sie sich 1964 ganz auf den Schriftstellerberuf konzentrierte. Heute lebt sie in einem Haus aus dem 16. Jahrhundert in Suffolk.

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 dream 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. Now, nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still lived in the same house in Clapham. But it had been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother lived upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy had drowned, had disappeared. Ismay worked in public relations, and Heather in catering. They got on well. They always had. They never discussed the changes to the house, still less what had 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.

Ruth Rendell has won many awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for 1976's best crime novel with A Demon in My View; a second Edgar in 1984 from the Mystery Writers of America for the best short story, 'The New Girl Friend and a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986. She was also the winner of the 1990 Sunday Times Literary award, as well as the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

'He had never told anyone. The strange relationship, if it could be called that, had gone on for years, decades, and he had never breathed a word about it. He had kept silent because he knew no one would believe him. None of it could be proved, not the stalking, not the stares or the conspiratorial smiles, not the killings, not any of the signs Targo had made because he knew Wexford knew and could do nothing about it'. 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. Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, a woman called Elsie Carroll had been found strangled in her bedroom. Although many still had their suspicions that her husband was guilty, no one was convicted. Another woman was strangled shortly afterwards, and every personal and professional instinct told Wexford that the killer was still at large. And it was Eric Targo. A psychopath who would kill again...As the Chief Inspector investigates a new case, Ruth Rendell looks back to the beginning of Wexford's career, even to his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. The past is a haunted place, with clues and passions that leave an indelible imprint on the here and now.

Gwendolen Chawcer es una solterona octogenaria que vive entregada a la lectura y a la fantasía de un viejo amor, pero tan melancólica y plácida existencia se ve alterada cuando decide alquilar la planta de arriba de la mansion familiar en el barrio de Notting Hill. Su nuevo arrendatario, Mix Cellini, es un mecanico de maquinas de fitness con una fijacion: los crimenes cometidos sesenta años antes por el tristemente celebre John Christie. Gwendolen no tarda en descubrir tan siniestra obsesion, pero ignora que esta adquirira tintes cada vez mas macabros cuando Mix se enamore perdidamente de la modelo Nerissa Nash.Con Trece escalones, Ruth Rendell presenta un retrato perturbador de dos personajes dispares pero hermanados por sus neurosis romanticas. De paso, la gran dama de la novela de suspense psicologico incide en temas tan espinosos como el culto al crimen o las ansias de celebridad en nuestra sociedad.