Ruth Rendell

A bypass is planned in Kingsmarkham, but before the protestors make their presence felt, the badly decomposed body of a young woman is discovered....

Four members of the Coverdale family - George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles....

Chief Inspector Wexford is concerned about a pedophile who has been recently released back into the community but cannot foresee a series of serious crimes waiting to happen....

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

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge kills the wrong person. The young woman in the car behind is spared. But only for a while....

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

Only eighteen black people live in Kingsmarkham. One of them is Wexford's new Doctor, Raymond Akande. When the doctor's daughter, Melanie, goes missing....

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....

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

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?....

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....

'I think you know who killed your stepfather', said Wexford....

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

Eve and Liza, Mother and Daughter, live a quiet life in their remote home; a rustic gatehouse of a country mansion....

Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. He and his wife, Dora, now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and their daughter....

Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury - a human hand. The body has lain buried for ten years or so....

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....

Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never again set eyes on Eric Targo. And yet there he was, back in Kingsmarkham, still with that cocky, strutting walk....

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

A spectacularly compelling story of blackmail, murders both accidental and opportunistic, and one life’s fateful unraveling....