In A Demon in My View, Ruth Rendell creates a character as frightening as he is fascinating. Mild-mannered Arthur Johnson has never known how to talk to women. And his loneliness has perverted his desire for love and respect into a carefully controlled penchant for violence. One floor below him, a scholar finishing his thesis on psychopathic personalities is about to stumble—quite literally—upon one of Arthur's many secrets. Haunting and intelligent, A Demon in My View shows the startling results of this chilling alchemy of two very disparate minds—one pathological and the other obsessed with pathology.

In A Demon in My View, Ruth Rendell creates a character as frightening as he is fascinating. Mild-mannered Arthur Johnson has never known how to talk to women. And his loneliness has perverted his desire for love and respect into a carefully controlled penchant for violence. One floor below him, a scholar finishing his thesis on psychopathic personalities is about to stumble—quite literally—upon one of Arthur's many secrets. Haunting and intelligent, A Demon in My View shows the startling results of this chilling alchemy of two very disparate minds—one pathological and the other obsessed with pathology.

When a body of a middle-aged woman is found under a hedge, Inspector Wexford finds he has very little information to pursue the case. From the author of AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS and THE VEILED ONE.

This latest gem from the British master concerns the wreckage wrought on a variety of Londoners by a womanizing con man who speaks in rhymes. Here, as in A Sight for Sore Eyes (1999), Rendell’s genius is to create characters so vivid they live beyond the frame of the novel. She pushes the ordinary to the point of the bizarre while remaining consistently believable. Araminta “Minty” Knox, the fragile center of the plot, is a 30-something woman, alone and obsessed with hygiene, who works in a dry-cleaning shop. All the world is a petri dish for Minty, who sees germs everywhere, which she attacks with Wright’s Coal Tar Soap. She is equally tormented by the ghosts she imagines, her domineering “Auntie” and the man who took her virginity. Other characters hover on the borderline between transformation and disaster. Tory MP “Jims” Melcombe-Smith, in bed politically with the “family values” crowd, is simultaneously courting a gay lover. Working-class Zillah Leach, bored with her small children and smaller bank account, schemes to marry up, even at the risk of committing bigamy. This is not a whodunit in the sense of Rendell’s Inspector Wexford novels, but a study of crime’s origins and especially its consequences as they ripple out beyond the immediate victims. The plot is intricate but brisk, and Rendell nails her characters’ psychology in all its perverse logic. She has a travel writer’s sensitivity to setting, to the architecture, cemeteries, birds and vegetation of contemporary Britain. This is a literary page-turner, both elegant and accessible.

El inspector Wexford regresa para enfrentarse a un caso de talante ecologista. Hasta su propia esposa ha sido tomada como rehén, mientras avanzan las obras de una nueva carretera que causará irremediables daños en el entorno natural de su pueblo. Intriga, crítica social e imprevisibles psicologías.

No suspense collection is complete without this anthology. Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the stories in this volume represent many of the biggest names in detective and suspense fiction: Ellery Queen, Harold Q. Masur, Celia Fremlin, Jack Ritchie, Patricia Highsmith and Bill Pronzini are only a few of the prize-winning authors in this amazing volume.

Un pastor anglicano se pone en contacto con el detective Wexford para investigar un caso resuelto quince años atrás. Arthur Painter, chofer y jardinero de una acaudalada dama, asesinó a su anciana patrona por dinero. Aunque el sacerdote actúa por motivos personales muy lícitos, el inspector jefe no está dispuesto a dar su brazo a torcer y ratifica que condenó al auténtico responsable del homicidio. Pero a medida que el tenaz religioso comunique al policía nuevas pesquisas y hable con distintos testigos, se irá desvelando una oscura trama de intereses económicos que apunta a uno de los miembros de la familia de la víctima como principal beneficiario de su muerte. Al final, Wexford no podrá continuar haciendo oídos sordos a las dudas que se ciernen sobre su primer caso criminal…

Cuando el marido de Joy Williams, una vecina del inspector Wexford, desaparece misteriosamente nadie imagina que el mundo de Joy se desmoronará por completo. En efecto, sin que ella lo supiese, su marido ocupaba un alto cargo en una empresa de pinturas, ganaba un abultado salario y, aún más desconcertante, estaba casado también con otra mujer. Joy lo creía un modesto vendedor de la empresa con unos ingresos mediocres y, desde luego, un marido modélico. Pero las cosas ya no tienen marcha atrás, pues el cadáver del bígamo ha sido hallado en las afueras del pueblo. ¿Suicidio? ¿Asesinato? ¿Quién era en realidad Rod Williams?… Una nueva incursión de la autora en los extraños entresijos de la mentalidad criminal.

From award-winning author Ruth Rendell – 'without a doubt the grand dame of British crime fiction,' (The Gazette) – comes the chilling new Inspector Wexford novel.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 shroud. The post mortem cannot reveal the precise cause of death. The only clue is a crack in one of the dead man's ribs.Although the police database covers a relatively short period of time, it stores a long list of Missing Persons. Men, women and children disappear at an alarming rate-hundreds every day. 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 discovered.The detection skills of Wexford, Burden, and the other investigating officers of the Kingsmarkham Police Force, are tested to the utmost to see if the murders are connected and to track down whoever is responsible.

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 lamppost 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.

La ciudad del inspector Wexford -personaje legendario de la autora- se ve sacudida por la desaparición de una joven de color. El inspector se lanza a una investigación que le desvela los resortes más difíciles de la convivencia racial, y una sociedad de claroscuros que confirma la maestría de la autora británica para urdir tramas perfectas y ahondar en las miserias humanas.

A Detective Chief Inspector Wexford novel. The fatal car accident involving the stockbroker Fanshawe couldn't possibly be connected with the murder of a cocky little lorry driver. But was it a coincidence that the latter died the day after Mrs Fanshawe regained consciousness?

When Philip Wardman's feminine ideal, a Greek goddess, appears in the flesh as Senta Pelham, Philip thinks he has found true love. But darker forces are at work, and Senta is led to propose that Philip prove his love by committing murder.

About the Book‘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.About the AuthorRuth Rendell is crime fiction at its very best. Her first novel, From Doon With Death, appeared in 1964, and since then her reputation and readership have grown steadily with each new book.In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing.Her books are translated into 21 languages.

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.

A classic Rendellian loner, Mix Cellini is superstitious about the number 13. Living in a decaying house in Notting Hill, Mix is obsessed with 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed a series of foul murders. He is also infatuated with a beautiful model who lives nearby – a woman who would not look at him twice. Mix's landlady, Gwedolen Chawcer is equally reclusive – living her life through her library of books. Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes.

La octogenaria Gwendolen Chawcer, una solterona que jamás logró escapar a la posesiva personalidad de su padre, vive entregada a la lectura compulsiva y a la fantasía de un viejo amor imposible en St. Blaise House, la mansión victoriana de la familia en el barrio londinense de Notting Hill. Pero tan melancólica y plácida existencia se ve alterada cuando, haciendo caso al consejo de unas amigas, decide alquilar la planta de arriba de la casa.Su nuevo arrendatario, Mix Cellini, es un mecánico de máquinas de fitness con una fijación: los crímenes que John Christie cometió sesenta años antes en el número 10 de Rillington Place, apartamento del horror a escasa distancia de St. Blaise House. Gwendolen no tarda en descubrir tan siniestra obsesión, pero ignora que ésta irá adquiriendo tintes cada vez más macabros cuando Mix se enamore perdidamente de la modelo Nerissa Nash.Con Trece escalones, Ruth Rendell presenta con su maestría habitual un retrato perturbador y perverso de dos personajes tremendamente dispares pero a la vez hermanados por sus neurosis románticas. De paso, la gran dama de la novela de suspense psicológico incide en temas tan espinosos como el culto a los grandes criminales de la historia o las ansias de celebridad que caracterizan a nuestra sociedad.