Ruth Rendell
1) Road rage
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Chief Inspector Wexford is walking through Framhurst Great Wood, just outside his beloved town of Kingsmarkham, for what he tells himself will be the last time. He can no longer bear to look at the natural beauty that will soon be despoiled by the construction of a new highway. Wexford rather despairs of the project; his more sanguine wife, Dora, is active on a committee to save the threatened land. Others are more desperate to achieve their end,...
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In the waning months of the Second World War, a group of children discover an earthen tunnel in their neighborhood.Throughout the summer of 1944--until one father forbids it--the subterranean space becomes their "secret gardens," 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...
3) The vault
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Former Chief Inspector Wexford returns from retirement to solve a most unlikely case: the mystery of who killed the three people whose corpses were last seen at the bottom of a coal hole in A Sight for Sore Eyes (1999). In the decade since Franklin Merton left St. John's Wood in 1998, Orcadia Cottage has changed hands twice by the time Martin Rokeby, who wants to make room for an amphora his wife Anne found in Florence, pulls up a manhole cover in...
5) Harm done
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In Britain, a pedophile's house is burned by an angry mob when a girl disappears, the man having been recently released from jail. But Inspector Wexford is not swayed by the obvious and traces the disappearance to the girl's home and her abusive father.
7) Simisola
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While searching for a missing person, Inspector Wexford discovers multiple murders of victims who resemble the missing girl leading him to reevaluate his ideas about race and gender relations.
10) The bridesmaid
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A beautiful woman fascinated by death insists that Philip, whose one eccentricity is a neurotic fear of death and violence, must commit murder to prove his love for her
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Life for the residents of Hexam Place appears placid and orderly on the outside: drivers take their employers to and from work, dogs are walked, flowers planted in gardens, and Christmas candles lit uniformly in windows. But beneath this tranquil veneer, the upstairs/downstairs relationships are set to combust.
12) The veiled one
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Chief Inspector Wexford, injured in a car bombing, must rely on Detective Mike Burden to catch a killer in what appears to be a murder without motive Chief Inspector Wexford couldn’t know that the bundle of rags in the parking garage concealed a body—he’d just been doing a bit of light shopping, after all, not looking for dead housewives. Wexford won’t be on the case for long; a car bomb sends him to the hospital, and Inspector Mike Burden...
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Over the years there have been several unsolved, apparently motiveless murders in the town of Kingsmarkham, and Wexford (as a young policeman) quietly suspected that the increasingly prosperous Targo -- van driver, property developer, kennel owner, and animal lover -- was behind them. Now, half a lifetime later, Inspector Wexford spots Targo back in Kingsmarkham after a long absence.
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When Stuart Font decides to throw a house warming party in his new flat he invites everyone in his building. The party will be one everyone remembers; but not for the right reasons. 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 on the occupants of Lichfield House.
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"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...
18) Going wrong
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Once Guy and Leonora were lovers. Now it's over but Guy can't forget ... or forgive. Every day he calls Leo with fantasies about their love and their future. All she wants is him out of her life.
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Mix Cellini (which he pronounces with an 'S' rather than a 'C') is superstitious about the number 13. In musty old St. Blaise House, where he is the lodger, there are thirteen steps down to the landing below his rooms, which he keeps spick and span. His elderly landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, was born in St. Blaise House, and lives her life almost exclusively through her library of books, so cannot see the decay and neglect around her. The Notting Hill...
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A young boy dies, another goes missing, and one mother's choice will forever alter many lives When Benet's young son dies on the operating table, she cannot be comforted-not even by her mother who cares for a young boy just about the same age. Meanwhile, another mother's son goes missing, and police circle around possible suspects in what must be murder. These three mothers-the schizophrenic Mopsa, upwardly mobile Benet, and gold-digging Carol-become...