THE BOOKS AND FILMS
OF RUTH RENDELL

Essay by Judy Harris

visit my home page: http://judyharris.net/index.htm

PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS
ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 2001
THE BRIDESMAID
1989
THE CROCODILE BIRD
1993
DARK CORNERS
2015
A DEMON IN MY VIEW
1976
THE FACE OF TRESPASS 1974
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
2014
GOING WRONG 1990
HEARTSTONES
1987
A JUDGEMENT IN STONE
1977
THE KEYS TO THE STREET 1996
THE KILLING DOLL
1984
THE LAKE OF DARKNESS 1980
LIVE FLESH 1986
MAKE DEATH LOVE ME 1979
MASTER OF THE MOOR 1982
ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN 1971
PORTOBELLO 2008
THE ROTTWEILER
2003
SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH
1968
A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES 1998
THE ST. ZITA SOCIETY 2012
TALKING TO STRANGE MEN 1987
THE THIEF
2006
THIRTEEN STEPS DOWN 2004
TIGERLILY'S ORCHIDS 2010
TO FEAR A PAINTED DEVIL 1965
THE TREE OF HANDS 1984
VANITY DIES HARD 1965
THE WATER'S LOVELY 2006

CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD NOVELS
BABES IN THE WOOD 2003
THE BEST MAN TO DIE 1969
DEATH NOTES 1981
END IN TEARS 2005
FROM DOON WITH DEATH 1964
A GUILTY THING SURPRISED
1970
HARM DONE 1999
KISSING THE GUNNER'S DAUGHTER 1992
THE MONSTER IN THE BOX 2009
MURDER BEING ONCE DONE 1972
A NEW LEASE OF DEATH
1967
NO MAN'S NIGHTINGALE 2013
NO MORE DYING THEN 1971
NOT IN THE FLESH 2007
ROAD RAGE 1997
SHAKE HANDS FOR EVER 1975
SIMISOLA 1995
SINS OF THE FATHERS 1986
A SLEEPING LIFE
1978
SOME LIE AND SOME DIE 1973
SPEAKER OF MANDARIN 1983
AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS
1985
THE VAULT
2011
THE VEILED ONE
1988
WOLF TO THE SLAUGHTER 1967

BARBARA VINE
ANNA'S BOOK 1993
THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT 2008
THE BLOOD DOCTOR
2002
BRIMSTONE WEDDING 1986
THE CHILD'S CHILD
2012
THE CHIMNEY SWEEPERS BOY 1998
A DARK-ADAPTED EYE
1986
A FATAL INVERSION
1987
GALLOWGLASS 1990
GRASSHOPPER 2000
THE HOUSE OF STAIRS 1989
KING SOLOMON'S CARPET 1991
THE MINOTAUR 2005
NO NIGHT IS TOO LONG 1994

**PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS**
ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME	2001
THE BRIDESMAID	1989
THE CROCODILE BIRD	1993
DARK CORNERS	2015
A DEMON IN MY VIEW	1976
THE FACE OF TRESPASS	1974
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR	2014
GOING WRONG	1990
HEARTSTONES	1987
A JUDGEMENT IN STONE	1977
THE KEYS TO THE STREET	1996
THE KILLING DOLL	1984
THE LAKE OF DARKNESS	1980
LIVE FLESH	1986
MAKE DEATH LOVE ME	1979
MASTER OF THE MOOR	1982
ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN	1971
PORTOBELLO	2008
THE ROTTWEILER	2003
SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH	1968
A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES	1998
THE ST. ZITA SOCIETY	2012
TALKING TO STRANGE MEN	1987
THE THIEF	2006
THIRTEEN STEPS DOWN	2004
TIGERLILY'S ORCHIDS	2010
TO FEAR A PAINTED DEVIL	1965
THE TREE OF HANDS	1984
VANITY DIES HARD	1965
THE WATER'S LOVELY	2006

**CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD NOVELS**
BABES IN THE WOOD	2003
THE BEST MAN TO DIE	1969
DEATH NOTES	1981
END IN TEARS	2005
FROM DOON WITH DEATH	1964
A GUILTY THING SURPRISED	1970
HARM DONE	1999
KISSING THE GUNNER'S DAUGHTER	1992
THE MONSTER IN THE BOX	2009
MURDER BEING ONCE DONE	1972
A NEW LEASE OF DEATH	1967
NO MAN'S NIGHTINGALE	2013
NO MORE DYING THEN	1971
NOT IN THE FLESH	2007
ROAD RAGE	1997
SHAKE HANDS FOR EVER	1975
SIMISOLA	1995
SINS OF THE FATHERS	1986
A SLEEPING LIFE	1978
SOME LIE AND SOME DIE	1973
SPEAKER OF MANDARIN	1983
AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS	1985
THE VAULT	2011
THE VEILED ONE	1988
WOLF TO THE SLAUGHTER	1967

**BARBARA VINE**
ANNA'S BOOK	1993
THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT	2008
THE BLOOD DOCTOR	2002
BRIMSTONE WEDDING	1986
THE CHILD'S CHILD	2012
THE CHIMNEY SWEEPERS BOY	1998
A DARK-ADAPTED EYE	1986
A FATAL INVERSION	1987
GALLOWGLASS	1990
GRASSHOPPER	2000
THE HOUSE OF STAIRS	1989
KING SOLOMON'S CARPET	1991
THE MINOTAUR	2005
NO NIGHT IS TOO LONG	1994

Ruth Rendell is my favorite author and I've read everything she's written; I prefer her psychological thrillers to her Wexfords. I got to meet her in person at three different book signings when she was in New York; one was a reading of THE CROCODILE BIRD and one was a couple of years earlier when she was in town to coincide with the annual Fifth Avenue Book Fair which took place on a Sunday late in September. Most recently I saw her at the NYC 86th Street Barnes & Noble where she read the opening chapter to THE VAULT, her Wexford sequel to A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES.

This webpage "grew" over a number of years, and I've recently (2017) decided to revamp it, because it became rather chaotic, as far as organization. Among other things, as time wore on, more and more of Ruth's books were adapted into films, either for TV or the cinema, and in almost all cases (in my opinion) failed to capture in these adaptations extremely cinematic and visceral moments that were obvious (to me) in the book(s). If you have not read a particular Rendell title, and don't want the plot surprises revealed, then SPOILER ALERT, do not read the column headed "Film", where I discuss my disappointments in various adaptations. Of course, no film can give the experience of a full novel, with its omniscient narrator and access to the very thoughts of the main protagonist, and some of my quibbles are with these omissions.

I have taken the lazy route and pasted in reviews published by PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, where available, and other Internet sources.

PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS
Year	Title	Book	Film
1965	VANITY DIES HARD	Alice Whittaker was 38, rich but dowdy, with no career. She has recently married Andrew Fielding, 9 years her junior, and worries about the age disparity. Now her friend, Nesta, has seemingly vanished, apparently leaving behind a trunk full of all her clothing and shoes.	Adapted as a 3-part 1995 episode with Leslie Phillips of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. Another dramatization unfaithful to the book (which was a damp squib in which no crime happened). In the TV version, the heroine is told she is infertile, which was not in the book; and there is a murder and a suicide, which did not take place in the book.
1965	TO FEAR A PAINTED DEVIL	Gossip in tiny Linchester is raised to new heights when young Patrick Selby dies on the night of his beautiful wife's birthday party. The whole neighborhood was there, witness to the horrible attack of wasps Patrick suffered at the end of the evening. But did Patrick die of the stings? Dr. Greenleaf thinks not. After all, wasps aren't the only creatures that kill with poison	Adapted as a 2-part 1989 episode entitled DANSE DE SALOME of the 20-part French TV series LE MASQUE, which I have never seen.
1968	SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH	Louise North doesn't care what the neighbors think. She lets her lover leave his car just outside her house in broad daylight, telling everyone a cockamamie story about him being a central heating salesman. Still, it's a shock when she's found shot dead, covered by the equally dead body of the "salesman." Now Susan Townsend -- the Norths' next-door neighbor, who discovers the bodies -- must help Louise's husband, Bob, get back on his feet. But is she helping a neighbor . . . or a murderer?	Adapted by John Harvey as a 2-part 1996 episode starring Owen Teale of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. As I have rewatched these episodes, this is the one that I felt was suspenseful and well done, but it turns out I had not previously read the book. An entire character was left out of the dramatization, a scenic designer who actually solves the case. The book also revealed how the murder was done, which the adaptation never addressed.
1971	ONE ACROSS TWO DOWN	Two things interest Stanley Manning: crossword puzzles, and the substantial sum his wife Vera stands to inherit when his mother-in-law dies. Otherwise, life at 61 Lanchester Road is a living hell. For Mrs. Kinaway lives with them now—and she will stop at nothing to tear their marriage apart. One afternoon, Stanley sets aside his crossword puzzles and changes all their lives forever. In One Across, Two Down, master crime writer Ruth Rendell describes a man whose strained sanity and stained reputation transform him from a witless loser into a killer afraid of his own shadow. Mischievously plotted, smart, maddeningly entertaining, One Across, Two Down is a dark delight—classic Rendell.	Adapted as the 1976 film DIARY OF THE DEAD, adapted by Robert L. Fish (who wrote the novel underlying BULLITT), starring Hector Elizondo, Austin Pendleton and Geraldine Fitzgerald. This is an example of a novel that had such potential for edge-of-the-seat tension that director Arvin Brown totally missed. There is a sequence in the book where the dead body of his mother-in-law is hidden under a bed, while the doctor pronounces her best friend dead, under the assumption it is the mother-in-law, that a talented director could have milked; in addition, the burying of the body in the back yard, trying to avoid the prying eyes of the neighbors could also have been a tense sequence, but is completely flubbed in the film. And finally, a sequence when the protagonist hides in the attic, while the police search for him inches away, which also could have been very suspenseful, was missing from the film.
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.	Adapted as the 1988 film AN AFFAIR IN MIND, starring Amanda Donohoe and Stephen Dillane. This was fairly faithful to the book, but lacked a sequence which nearly drove me out of my mind in which a dog may be dying of neglect. Also, the ending was changed, through the use of a Mac computer, which retained a copy of a document that was lost in the book. In the book, Gray's friend, the only one who has ever seen Drusilla, wakes up from a coma with the evidence to prove his innocence.
1976	A DEMON IN MY VIEW	A rigid man of fifty leads a solitary, apparently respectable life, as clerk and bookkeeper for a small business and part-time rent collector for his landlord. He has rented a flat in the building for twenty years because deep in its cellar, unbeknownst to anyone else, is a mannequin that he periodically "strangles" in order to satisfy his homicidal urges. The figure's location in the cellar, the darkness, the furtiveness, all are essential to the solitary man's satisfaction. The tenuous mental equilibrium he has been able to maintain is threatened when a young man, healthy in mind and body, a doctoral candidate in psychology, becomes a roomer in the house. Danger the older man senses from the moment the new tenant appears is horribly realized for him when the young man finds the mannequin and uses it as the figure in the bonfire at the Guy Fawkes Night celebration he has organized for the local children. The respectable fifty-year-old now must go back to the streets to find flesh more yielding than a mannequin's. There is a certain irony in that both the Kenbourne Killer and the student writing his dissertation on psychopaths are named A. Johnson; their lives will entwine in a way that brings death to one.	Adapted as the 1991 German film DER MANN NEBENAN, starring Anthony Perkins. Aside from the fact that the student was from Germany, this adaptation was extremely faithful to the book, in all but a few trivial details toward the end. Whole gobs of Ruth's original dialogue were used.
1977	A JUDGEMENT IN STONE	Eunice is taken on as a housekeeper by a family of four. She has kept her illiteracy a secret and is obsessed by continuing to keep it so. Unknown to her new employers, she has already murdered the father for whom she had been caring, and has falsified her references. Her inability to adapt to her place in society is masked by the cunning with which she conceals the truth about herself. Misinterpreting every act of kindness she is offered by her employers, she eventually turns on them, stealing the guns that are normally kept locked away. With the aid of a fellow social misfit, she murders the entire family. But Eunice's illiteracy prevents her from recognizing and disposing of a written clue that was left behind. Eventually a tape recording of the shooting made by one of the victims is discovered. Eunice is charged with the crime, and is mortified when her illiteracy is revealed to the world during the court proceedings.	Adapted as the 1986 film with Rita Tushingham and the 1995 Claude Chabrol film LA CEREMONIE, starring Isabelle Huppert and Jacqueline Bisset. The first of these dramatizations I found not faithful to the book, and both more violent than the book. Although they do contain many incidents from the book, and the two filmed versions are very similar to each other, the first completely misses the point (in my opinion) which is that this is a crime that would not have happened if the murderer were not illiterate. This is only peripheral to the Canadian film, but integral to the book and brilliantly presented. My friend John Groushko recently informed me that there have been UK stage productions of this novel, one in 2017 and a 1992 musical version starring Sheila Hancock.
1979	MAKE DEATH LOVE ME	Rendell just keeps getting better and better. A Judgment in Stone (1977) was a tour de force in her crime-from-the-criminal-point-of-view mode. A Sleeping Life (1978) brought back Inspector Wexford at his best. And now, without losing an iota of the understated, unsentimental crispness that is her trademark, she expands slightly beyond the mystery/crime genre: this new story has a double plot a bit reminiscent of Victor Canning, and it exudes a warmth rarely found in Rendell-land. The launchpad for both plot lines is a pathetic bank robbery in a Suffolk village. The two young misfits who rob the bank at lunchtime do get away with 4000 pounds, but they must also take with them homely, busty teller Joyce--who has seen their faces. (Their stocking masks get drenched in the rain.) While the panicky robbers and surly prisoner Joyce set up an impossible, awful, sexless menage a trois in a seedy London suburb, someone else is, on the other hand, enjoying himself: bank-manager Alan Groombridge, unhappily married and a bookish daydreamer, was watching the robbery while hiding in a closet (fondling 3000 pounds in bank cash as was his wont), and he has grabbed the opportunity to run away to London with his small fortune--the police, et al., believe him to have been kidnapped along with Joyce. So Rendell cuts back and forth from the increasingly grim state of affairs at the robbers' flat (one of them is coming clown with hepatitis, the other's gone round the bend) to Alan's rebirth in the nicest neighborhoods in London--new name, new home, and miraculous new love. But. . . Alan feels guilty about running away, about not helping the police to find poor kidnapped Joyce--so when he accidentally stumbles on the trail of the robbers, he must follow that trail and try to locate Joyce himself. The dark comedy and bright romance here quickly shift to taut drama and tragedy--but Rendell supports every jolt of suspense with dazzling shorthand characterization and detail-perfect atmosphere. A can't-stop-reading, humanized melodrama that could also be, in the right hands, the makings of a gem of a movie.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
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. In the Lake of Darkness, Ruth Rendell takes the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished to a startling, haunting conclusion.	Adapted as the 1988 episode DEAD LUCKY of the 163-part TV series SCREEN TWO with Phil Davis; as well as a 1999 episode with Cal MacAninch of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. Here at last, with the 1988 version is an almost perfect representation of the novel. Phil Davis so embodies the professional hitman and even tiny touches most adapters would leave out, such as a naked wrestling dream, are included. This may be the best ever Rendell film and it should be more readily available. I have recently rewatched the 1999 version, and find it pretty faithful, although without the film noir feel of the earlier version, and, of course, both versions compress time and eliminate characters and incidents which give weight to the book.
1982	MASTER OF THE MOOR	Columnist Stephen Walby, known as the Voice of Vangmoor, often goes on long walks through the countryside that lies outside his window. However, events take on a sinister turn when he stumbles across the body of a young woman, whose face has been badly disfigured and her hair shaven. After another corpse surfaces he finds himself under suspicion from the local police, and when he then goes on to discover that his wife has been having an affair, tragedy ensues.	Adapted as a 3-part 1994 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES, starring Colin Firth and George Costigan. While this was well acted, it was so changed from the novel, one character even being killed who survived in the book, that I was unable to enjoy it.
1984	THE KILLING DOLL	The winter before he was sixteen, amateur magician Pup made a Faustian pact and sold his soul to the devil. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to get in exchange. Pup's older sister, Dolly, lives the life of a recluse because of her facial birthmark, and views Pup more maternally than as a brother. She becomes pathologically transfixed by Pup's dabbling in magic, desperate to believe he has occult powers that can cure her disfigurement, improve their lives, and kill their stepmother. As Dolly's obsession grows, a young mentally disturbed Irishman lurks just around the corner, inseparable from his sharpened set of knives. In this intense and deeply disturbing novel, Ruth Rendell explores a haunted world of obsession, delusions and murderous fantasy, with dazzling virtuosity.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover; this is a gem that contains a sequence that a Hitchcock or DePalma could have brought audiences to the edge of their seats when the protagonist tries to push a victim off a crowded subway platform. It also has scope for portraying Dolly's deteriorating mental state, which goes from hearing voices, to seeing her dead mother and stepmother to finally being haunted by the jackal headed god Anubis.
1984	THE TREE OF HANDS	Mrs. Archdale, who is recovering from mental illness, visits her daughter Benet, a young, successful London author, and grandson James. Across town, Barry Mahon devotes himself to pleasing Carol Stratford, who has a slew of other boyfriends and takes care of her neglected son Jason. When Jason is kidnapped, the police accuse Barry of the crime. More tragedies occur after Mrs. Archdale commits a deranged act, which establishes a connection between Benet and Carol. The ending of this "major triumph'' leaves the reader "breathless,'' PW noted.	Adapted as the 1989 film INNOCENT VICTIM, starring Helen Shaver, Lauren Bacall and Peter Firth; as well as the 2001 French film ALIAS BETTY (a/k/a BETTY FISHER ET AUTRES HISTOIRES (in France, the novel was apparently called UN ENFANT POUR UN AUTRE). In this latter, Benet's son dies falling out of a window to reach a wild bird; in the book, he has croup and goes to the hospital where he needs a tracheotomy, but dies before it can be given. In the book, Carol's boyfriend is a 20 year old Irish guy who is beat up by 3 teenagers who believe he has killed the missing child; in response to this, he buys a sawed off shotgun. In the film, he's an older black guy and there is no special motivation for buying the gun, except his jealousy of Carol. In the book, he spies on the man he suspects is the child's father; in the film, he threatens him on a bus. In the film, you see the man who kills Carol and Benet's ex is Carol's jealous boss; in the book, you never find out who shoots them. In the book, Edward was never married to Benet; in the film, he is her ex husband. In the film, the man who has illegally sold the house winds up in the same boarding area at the airport as Benet and the kidnapped child; in the book, their paths don't cross. Almost all the character names are changed in the French film, which is set in a suburb of Paris.
1986	LIVE FLESH	Victor Jenner is a sociopath. After ten years in prison for shooting - and permanently crippling - a young policeman, Victor is released to a strange new world and told to make a new life for himself. It's hard to adjust to civilian life, but at least there's one blessing - he was never convicted for all those rapes he committed. Then Victor meets David, the policeman he shot, and David's beautiful girlfriend, Clare. And suddenly Victor's new life is starting to look an awful lot like the old one.	Freely adapted as the 1997 Almodovar film, starring Javier Bardem. I found this a particularly unfaithful version, which retained only the central idea of a cop being shot and the criminal engaging in a love triangle with the cop's wife after the criminal gets out of prison. The locale was changed to Madrid, losing the very Britishness that is so much an enjoyable part of Rendell's works, and the phobia which afflicted the central character, so important in the book, was omitted in the film.
1987	HEARTSTONES	Sixteen-year-old Elvira's mother is dead. Elvira is sad, of course, but not so sad as her younger sister Spinny. Spinny is afraid their father, Luke, will be heartbroken, but Elvira knows better -- after all, Luke has her to take her mother's place. But then Luke brings home a pretty young woman and introduces her as his fiancee, and Elvira decides that she will stop at nothing to stop her father's marriage .	Adapted as a 1996 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES, starring Anthony Andrews, Emily Mortimer, Idris Elba and Elspet Gray. This was fairly faithful to the novela, but made more overt the identity of the murderer.
1987	TALKING TO STRANGE MEN	Safe houses and secret message drops, double crosses and defections - it sounds like the stuff of sophisticated espionage, but the agents are only schoolboys engaged in harmless play, unaware of the danger awaiting them if their messages were intercepted. John Creevey doesn't know the truth behind the mysterious codes he is reading. To him, the messages he decodes with painstaking care are the communications of dangerous and evil men. As he comes face to face with the reality of his beloved wife Jennifer's defection, he begins to see a way to get back at the man she left him for, a man with a disturbing connection to schoolboys. And soon the schoolboys are playing more than just a game.	Adapted as a 1992 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This was fairly faithful to the book, but missed out on the genuine creepiness of the ending, where you fear for the life and innocence of a young boy, who is put in close contact with a pedophile.
1989	THE BRIDESMAID	A young man fearful of violence, an extravagantly eccentric young woman and three deaths figure in this atmospheric but insubstantial mystery from one of England's finest horror/suspense writers. Philip Wardman, beginning his career as an interior designer, lives with his widowed mother and two sisters in a small house outside London. At his sister Fee's wedding, Philip meets Senta Pelham, cousin to the groom and a bridesmaid, with whom he falls quickly into bed and in love. Soon Senta, with her silver-dyed hair and exotic ways, tells Philip they must prove the unconventionality of their love: each must commit a murder. Secretly appalled, Philip demurs, but Senta is adamant and soon he tells her that a recent killing mentioned in the newspaper was done at his hand. When Senta files her own report, Philip is much relieved, believing through a series of misunderstandings that she too has laid false claims to murder. The reality of Senta's imbalance is gradually revealed, however, and the police appear on the scene just as she unveils her grisly history. While Rendell depicts her characters with crystal clarity and renders Philip's sexual obsessiveness convincingly, the plot, woven of flimsy circumstances, doesn't hold up.	Adapted as a 2004 Claude Chabrol film entitled LA DEMOISELLE D'HONNEUR. As with CROCODILE BIRD, Senta's character has agoraphobia, which is completely missing from the film, and is depicted none too accurately in the book. All but 4 of the character names were changed in the book; the statue Flora is just a head in the film, instead of a 3-foot high complete figure and does not lead the police to Philip as it did in the book. There were other minor changes, but basically the compression of time from the length of the events in the book made the plot even harder to believe.
1990	GOING WRONG	Rendell is near the top of her form in this icy, arresting tale of obsessive love. As a 14-year-old scuffling his way up in the London drug and protection rackets, Guy Curran fell for Leonora Chisholm, a girl from a gentler, upper-crust home. Guy, who stopped dealing drugs after a customer took LSD and died, now makes a bundle off paintings of frolicking kittens and teary-eyed children; Leo is content to live in politically correct semi-squalor with two female friends Guy detests. Every Saturday the childhood sweethearts--now in their 20s--lunch together, every day Guy calls and nearly every minute he spins out elaborate fantasies about their love. He blames Leo's close-knit family and viperish friends for turning her against him. In an increasingly deranged, confused state exacerbated by Leo's impending marriage and a river of alcohol, Guy points a triggerman at first one member of her family, then the next. Rendell is a master of depicting the long, slow slide into madness, making each tiny step toward the abyss resound with chilling logic. Readers will see the final wind-up punch coming, but the irony is no less delicious for that.	Adapted as a 1998 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This to me did not adequately portray the deep paranoia of Guy, his constant rejection of reality for illusion, nor the danger he was to Leonora's friends and family, when he tries to decide which of them he will hire a hitman to eliminate. The ironic ending, when he is tripped up by a note he wrote to be passed onto the hitman, does not include the book's revelation that one of the arresting officers is Guy's teenage tearaway friend, Linus, whom he believes had died of a drug overdose. The adaptation cast Linus as the man who takes LSD and dies of an allergy to bee stings while under its influence; in the book, this was a complete stranger who hassled Guy to sell him some acid. Finally, while Guy eventually arranges for a hit on Leo's roommate, she goes abroad for a holiday and someone else is killed, who fits the description of the woman he writes up for the hitman.
1993	THE CROCODILE BIRD	Like a modern-day Scheherazade, young Liza Beck tells her story over a span of nights and in the process finds salvation. After the police question her mother, Eve, about the death of Jonathan Tobias, the owner of Shrove House, 16-year-old Liza runs away with Sean, the young garden hand at the remote English manor. It is to him, over the course of 101 nights, that Liza gradually reveals her strange upbringing, living alone with Eve in the gatehouse of the Tobias estate. Rigorously schooled by her mother, isolated from all society except, on occasion, the mailman or groundskeeper and the few men, including Tobias, whom Eve admits into their world, Liza learns early that others may have something to fear from Eve, but that she does not. Credibility never flags as Edgar Award-winning Rendell reveals the specifics of Liza's increasing contact with the world, creating suspense in the gradually meted out details of Eve's intense attachment to Shrove House and her determination to protect Liza from civilization. Although unpredictable, the payoff seems a little weak and the careful pace somewhat slow; nevertheless, there are no holes in this psychological puzzler that has a strong afterlife.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover about a woman who develops agoraphobia after a rape.
1996	THE KEYS TO THE STREET	In a story that commands--and fully rewards--intense engagement from its readers, Rendell once again proves an astute, intense observer of physical and psychological detail, demonstrating that we are surrounded by people we don't see and fail to appreciate the ways in which intimates and strangers are connected to us. Housesitting in a posh home near London's Regent's Park lets Mary Jago separate from her abusive and persistent lover, whose behavior has worsened since she decided to donate bone marrow to save the life of an anonymous recipient. When she meets Leo Nash, the marrow recipient, she enters a heady courtship with the stranger whose very being is now linked to hers. While she does notice Bean, the strange little man who works as a dog walker and behaves like a "superior upper servant'' in an old film, and she cheerfully finds kind words for Roman Ashton, one of the area's many "dossers,'' or street people, Mary little suspects how complex their histories are, what their fears and schemes might be or what they notice in return. Likewise, she is sheltered from the fears of the area's homeless as one after another is killed and then impaled on the spikes of park railings. When a crack is exposed in the edifice of Mary's new and happy life, the death lurking beneath it may be something else she never fully comprehends. With this meticulously crafted work, Rendell reminds us how complex, interconnected and fragile modern life is.	As of 2016, this is in preproduction as a film from director Julius Sevcík from a script by Michael Stokes.
1998	A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES	A pair of English teens, Teddy and Francine (who have grown up in dysfunctional families where common parenting faults are taken to extremes), meet and think that in each other they might find the beauty and freedom their own lives are lacking. Their troubled affair takes a while to get going, but once it does, Rendell's sharp characterizations and idiosyncratic descriptions are riveting. Though several deaths occur in the book, the only real mystery is that of the murder of Francine's mother, which Francine overheard (near the novel's beginning) when she was seven. Instead, Rendell focuses more on how a few sedately bizarre tics can build exponentially into insanity. Francine's stepmother, for example, progresses from simple worry about her stepdaughter's well-being to obsessive anxiety that borders on dementia. Rendell follows the story's principal objects as closely as she does its characters: the diamond and sapphire engagement ring that Teddy's indifferent mother finds in a public bathroom; the video case in which Francine's mother hid her love letters, the painting of two young lovers that shows Teddy the perfect beauty he would kill for. Rendell leaves nothing and no one unaccounted for, from the looks given by the neighbors over the fence to the idle thoughts that pass through characters' minds when they scan a room. A tour-de-force of psychological suspense, the novel culminates in a dramatic climax that's as unforgettable as what has preceded it.	Adapted as 2003 French film, INQUIETUDES, I had such high hopes for this, as it had great scope to be a really chilling suspense film, but all those aspects were missed or squandered. The idea of riding around in an old Edsel with your murdered uncle in the trunk could have been quite creepy, but nothing was made of it; and the horror of the realization you have fallen into a pit and no one knows you are there; you have cemented the access to it yourself, and so you know you will gradually die of starvation, accompanied by the rotting corpses of people you've murdered---so much could have been made of this, and zilch in the film.
2001	ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME	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.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover; this is another gem with an intricately woven tapestry of characters affected by a murder; the potential for showing one character's descent into madness could make this a very compelling film.
2003	THE ROTTWEILER	The latest victim in a series of apparently motiveless murders is found near Inez Ferry's antique shop in Marylebone. Someone saw a shadowy figure running away, but the only other clues are that the murderer usually strangles his victim and removes something personal, like a cigarette lighter or a necklace…. The activities of the sinister "Rottweiler" will exert a profound influence on the lives of a small group of people, especially when the suspicion emerges that one of them may be a homicidal maniac.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover, although the title exists already and no doubt the film would have to be retitled. This is another gem with yet another intricately woven tapestry of characters affected by a series of murders.
2004	THIRTEEN STEPS DOWN	British veteran Rendell (The Rottweiler ) delivers the best novel she's written in years, featuring elderly Gwendolen Chawcer and her younger tenant-in-the-attic, "Mix" Cellini. The unlikely housemates share St. Blaise House, Chawcer's rotting London mansion, full of many generations of dead insects and past dreams of upper-middle-class glory. Both Chawcer and Cellini are looking for love in all the wrong places. Boozy, delusional Cellini—who earns his keep fixing fitness equipment and is a "fan" of real-life murderer Harold Christie—obsesses about supermodel Nerissa Nash. He'll do anything to snag her attention and assume his "rightful" place as her husband. The Miss Havisham–like Chawcer pines for Dr. Stephen Reeves, whom she last saw when he attended her dying mother in 1953. Cellini spins out of control first, killing a clingy, "unworthy" date, then hiding her beneath the floorboards in his apartment. Rendell exhibits all her trademark virtues: vivid characters, a plot addictive as crack and a sense of place unequaled in crime fiction.	Adapted as a 2012 film, starring Luke Treadaway and Geraldine James. This is another adaptation that missed the mark as far as generating any frissons during a murder, the creepiness of a body hidden under the floor, the tension of getting it buried in the back yard, and the subsequent second body positioned under the floorboards, as well as the "haunting" of the killer by what he thinks is the ghost of a famous mass murderer Christie. A text book example of how a book is superior to a film adaptation.
2006	THE WATER'S LOVELY	Three-time Edgar Award–winner Rendell often creates fragile characters, trembling on the edge of losing a lover, child, job, solvency or sanity. Slashing through their world is a “wild card,” an obsessive or a sociopath too focused on personal gain to be concerned with damage to others. The vulnerable people at the heart of this taut and enticing stand-alone are the Sealand family, particularly Heather, who's assumed to have drowned her unsavory stepfather, Guy, in the bath while he was weak with illness. A veritable pack of wild cards—including Marion Melville, who cozies up to the lonely and aged in hopes of inheriting their estates after she's poisoned them, and Marion's Dumpster-diving brother, Fowler—keeps everyone off guard. Rendell enlivens the tale with subplots involving various romances—ardent and desperate—and a killer who lurks in London's parks, as well as with pithy comments about class, technology, generational conflict, food and aesthetics. The plot twists in this electrifying read reach all the way to the last page.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2006	THE THIEF	Rendell 6/5/12 to PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY: I have written one little novella, The Thief, for the Quick Reads series that is designed for grownups who have just learned to read. They have words of one or two syllables, short sentences, and short paragraphs. 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.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2008	PORTOBELLO	Walking to the shops one day, fifty-year-old Eugene Wren discovers an envelope on the street bulging with cash. A man plagued by a shameful addiction—and his own good intentions—Wren hatches a plan to find the money’s rightful owner. Instead of going to the police, or taking the cash for himself, he prints a notice and posts it around Portobello Road. This ill-conceived act creates a chain of events that links Wren to other Londoners—people afflicted with their own obsessions and despairs. As these volatile characters come into Wren’s life—and the life of his trusting fiancée—the consequences will change them all. Portobello is a wonderfully complex tour de force featuring a dazzling depiction of one of London’s most intriguing neighborhoods—and the dangers beneath its newly posh veneer.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover, although the title exists already, and perhaps the film would have to be retitled. This is another gem with yet another intricately woven tapestry of characters affected by a crime. I identify strongly with Wren's addiction to Chocorange, a made-up sugarless treat, but not his self consciousness over shopkeepers seeing him buy it.
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 and, after some deliberation, even includes the unpleasant caretaker and his wife. They are a disparate group of people, each with their individual Rendellian psychoses and potential for violence. There are a few other genuine friends on the list, but he definitely does not want to include his girlfriend, Claudia, as that might involve asking her husband. The party will be one everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons. Living opposite, in reclusive isolation, is a beautiful young Asian woman, christened Tigerlily by Stuart. As though from some strange urban fairy tale, she emerges to exert a terrible spell on Stuart and his guests. Mr and Mrs Font, the worried parents, will soon have even more cause for concern about their handsome but hopelessly naive son. Darkly humorous and piercingly observant of human behavior, Ruth Rendell has created another compelling fable of our lives and crimes.	Adapted as the 2014 French film VALENTIN VALENTIN.
2012	THE ST. ZITA SOCIETY	A gardener believes he’s hearing the voice of God on his cellphone. A chauffeur is bedding his employer’s wife and daughter. A sexual affair is morphing into murder. And the help of a London street, Hexam Place, meet to drink and grouse at a nearby pub as they inaugurate what they call the St. Zita Society—a kind of freewheeling union named after the holy patron of servants. In Hexam Place live Montserrat, the insolent au pair to the haughty Stills family, and the Stills’ nanny, Rabia, who’s besotted with the little boy she tends. Here, too, are the 82-year-old Princess Susan Hapsburg and her tenant/companion, the resentful June. In this neighborhood, children wear Chanel sneakers, but get little love, and champagne is known as “The Drink That Is Never Wrong.” This novel radiates tension, sweeping along as the clandestine gets exposed, and a killer and an accomplice brainstorm about stashing a body. Rendell creates characters that seem to forsake the page of a Kindle or a Nook, and live beyond the borders of her novels: readers wonder how they’re faring in prison or in mourning. While delineating a dozen or so characters, Rendell makes each sufficiently viable to intrigue her audience and clash with one another. She is equally artful when evoking her settings, be it this gilded urban enclave, Inspector Wexford’s Kingsmarkham, a commune in a country house in A Fatal Inversion, or the unspecified seaport in Talking to Strange Men. As Britain has changed—in terms of diversity, technology, slang, fashion, and even take-out food—Rendell has maintained an insightful and often satiric commentary about it all. Written under her name or as Barbara Vine, the best of her work—Going Wrong, King Solomon’s Carpet, The Keys to the Street, The Birthday Present, and this fine novel—read like vintage Evelyn Waugh or Muriel Spark, informed with a psychological subtlety worthy of Iris Murdoch. One-quarter through this book, one man calls Monserrat a psychopomp, “a conductor of souls to hell.” Indeed, Rendell has functioned as a kind of psychopomp, conducting her fictional killers to hell—while ensuring that her readers enjoy the trip. More Americans ought to book a passage.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2014	THE GIRL NEXT DOOR	In this assured novel of psychological suspense from Diamond Dagger Award–winner Rendell (The St. Zita Society), a gruesome discovery jolts a group of friends and acquaintances who grew up outside London during WWII. Two people’s hands—severed and interred inside a cookie tin—are unearthed at a former construction site where they once hid and schemed. At the center of the now aged clique is the “girl next door,” Daphne Jones, ever envied and admired. John “Woody” Winwood, a man whose wife went missing with her lover during the turmoil of the blitzkrieg, is a malevolent presence, past and present, in the story. In contemporary Britain, Winwood’s son, Michael, must face his nonagenerian father, who abandoned him decades before and then married into money, inheriting a fortune from his subsequent wives. Rendell keeps the plot and the home fires burning, and the most memorable characters, Daphne and Woody, cast sufficient light to brighten their somewhat dull companions.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2015	DARK CORNERS	MWA Grand Master Rendell (1930–2015) often explored the lives of the luckless who are dogged by disastrous coincidence. In this, her final book, writer Carl Martin is one such hapless fellow. Carl inherits a choice townhouse in London's chic Maida Vale neighborhood. He's cash-poor while pounding out his second novel, so he rents the upper floor to a predatory tenant, Dermot McKinnon. A pious icicle, Dermot believes that Carl's stock of homeopathic medicines may have figured in the death of a friend of Carl's, 24-year-old TV actress Stacey Warren. Soon, Carl is fending off two blackmailers. As always in Rendell's work, the thoughtless and obtuse sow chaos for the careful and sensitive, and London shines as a strong presence. This is a beguiling, powerful novel, made poignant by the staggering realization that this is the last of a feast of characters and narratives. Everything that makes Rendell's work so memorable—gothic but believable people and plots, simple yet vivid prose, peerlessly rendered settings, and fear and despair as the twin "parents" of violence—is in evidence here. Readers may sigh along with one of the characters, when, in the last sentence, he remarks, "And now, now it's all over."	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.

Click here for more information on Rendell's psychological thrillers.

CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD NOVELS
George Baker portrayed Det. Chief Insp. Reg Wexford Christopher Ravenscroft played Det. Insp. Mike Burden Louie Ramsay portrayed Dora Wexford (and was married to Baker in real life) John Burgess played Dr. Len Crocker
Year	Title	Book	Film
1964	FROM DOON WITH DEATH	Margaret Parsons was a shy, unexceptional woman who lived a Spartan existence with her dour husband in a decrepit Victorian house. So why was she murdered in such a vicious and passionate attack? A search of the Parsons’ attic uncovers a collection of expensive books – all dedicated to Minna and signed with love from Doon. Wexford’s search to uncover the identity of the mysterious Doon takes him back to Margaret’s school days and her friendship with a group of girls who have now all become successful figures in Kingsmarkham society.	Adapted as a 2-part 1991 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES.
1967	WOLF TO THE SLAUGHTER	Rupert Margolis, a rising star in the art world and Kingsmarkham resident, reports the disappearance of his wealthy socialite sister. An anonymous note leads Wexford to believe that she has been murdered by a mysterious “Mr. Smith”. Rendell misleads readers into believing X has been killed, when it's really Y.	Adapted as a 4-part 1987 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. The TV adaptation by Clive Exton was very faithful to the novel.
1967	A NEW LEASE OF DEATH	Thirty years ago, Herbert Painter was hanged for the brutal murder of his ninety-year-old employer. The chief investigating officer was Reg Wexford, then a young detective sergeant in charge of his first murder case. Now, fifteen years later, the Reverend Henry Archery—a friend of the Chief Constable—arrives in Kingsmarkham determined to prove that Painter was innocent. Also known as SINS OF THE FATHER.	Adapted as a 3-part 1991 episode featuring Dorothy Tutin, Denis Lill and John Horsley of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This was faithful in the plot, but varied in the details. The original crime was moved to 30 years in the past, instead of 15, because one of the clues involved a real law which made adopted children able to inherit when a person died intestate. Some of the interviews conducted in the book by the clergyman were given to Burden (the adopted sisters) and to Wexford (John Horsley as the commanding officer of the murderer), and other characters completely disappeared or were reduced to a brief appearance. The bride in the book was a student, but in the TV version a tutor. All the flashbacks to the '50s were in black and white, with Wexford not shown, although George Baker provided the voice. In the book, Wexford wears tortoiseshell framed eyeglasses!
1969	THE BEST MAN TO DIE	A man is murdered on the eve of his best friend’s wedding and a young woman is found dead at the scene of a fatal road accident in which a wealthy businessman is also killed. Wexford and Burden discover a possible connection between the deaths in this tale of adultery, blackmail and greed. Wexford gets stuck for 2 hours in the police department's new elevator.	Adapted as a 3-part 1990 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES.
1970	A GUILTY THING SURPRISED	Quentin Nightingale—the owner of Myfleet Manor—and his beautiful wife Elizabeth, appeared to be a golden couple with many friends and few enemies. But when Elizabeth is murdered, Wexford and Burden uncover dark family secrets and discover that the key to solving the crime is held within the life of a great poet.	Adapted as a 3-part 1988 episode starring Michael Jayston of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. Another fairly faithful adaptation by Clive Exton.
1971	NO MORE DYING THEN	An unsolved case —the disappearance of ten year old Stella Rivers—still haunts DCI Wexford. Then, one year later, another child goes missing. Wexford’s investigations are further complicated by concerns for Inspector Mike Burden who is still grieving the death of his much loved wife Jean. Burden begins an affair with the missing child’s mother that threatens to jeopardize both the case and his career.	Adapted as a 3-part 1989 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This TV adaptation was fairly faithful to the book, except in two instances. In the book, the missing child is found by a complete coincidence when Burden takes the mother away to the seaside for a dirty weekend; in the TV version, Wexford decides to question the mother's ballerina friend, and takes the mother with him and she sees the child out the ballerina’s window. In the book, there’s a pervert sending hoax letters to the cops about having snatched the child and promising to return him, and Wexford figures out who this is because of remembering his voice as belonging to someone in the search party. The film ends with the pervert accidentally running into Wexford and Burton on his way to post the next anonymous letter, only he drops it and they pick it up.
1972	MURDER BEING ONCE DONE	Reg Wexford is recuperating from a thrombosis in London. His nephew, Howard Fortune is the chief superintendent of the local police. He becomes informally involved in investigating the murder of a young woman found strangled in a London cemetery vault.	Adapted as a 3-part 1991 episode featuring Ian McNeice of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This adaptation was severely messed about; Wexford's nephew was dropped, to be replaced by Burden, inexplicably seconded to London, so Wexford stays with him. The anxiety of waiting for an adoption to be approved, of having it possibly go wrong at the last minute by having the mother change her mind, central to the novel, is almost lost, replaced by a chase through a graveyard of a murderer with an infant in his arms.
1973	SOME LIE AND SOME DIE	John Burden’s hero, the rock star Zeno, comes to Kingsmarkham to perform at the Sunday’s Festival. The event passes peacefully until a young woman is found murdered. Why was the dead girl wearing someone else’s clothes? And could a secret relationship have led to her death?	Adapted as a 3-part 1990 episode starring Peter Capaldi of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. A not very faithful adaptation of the novel with extraneous side trips to the private lives of Wexford and Burden not in the novel.
1975	SHAKE HANDS FOREVER	Wexford knows who killed Angela Hathall but a lack of tangible evidence leaves the Chief Inspector open to accusations of harassment when he pursues the suspect. Undeterred, he embarks on his own, unofficial investigation, desperate to find the proof he needs before the murderer escapes justice.	Adapted as a 3-part 1988 episode starring Tom Wilkinson and June Ritchie of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This adaptation was fairly faithful, and had the advantage of compressing all the dull waiting in the book, of over a year's frustration for Wexford.
1978	A SLEEPING LIFE	The body of Rhoda Comfrey is found on a lonely canal path. Subsequent investigations reveal very little about the dead woman or her life. The only clue is a wallet belonging to historical novelist Grenville West that leads Wexford firstly to London, and then to France.	Adapted as a 3-part 1989 episode starring Imelda Staunton of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. Liberties were taken with the adaptation, but for the most part it was faithful.
1979	MEANS OF EVIL	Based on the short story of the same name from the collection of 5 Wexford cases published under that title. Axel Kingman leaves his lover, the celebrated cookery writer Corinne Last, and marries a much younger woman. Corinne’s generous acceptance of Axel’s new wife impresses everyone. When the wife dies from a mysterious fall, attention focuses on a mushroom stew which earlier made her very ill.	Adapted as a 2-part 1991 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES with Rossano Brazzi and Beryl Reid. While the main plot points were essentially the same, this is one of the most egregiously changed adaptations. Based on a 35 page short story, the dramatization began with the wedding of the happy couple. Unlike the short story where Burden is still a widower, in this version, he is married to Jenny and has a young son Mark. Also inserted into this is Wexford being asked by Amyas Ireland, an editor for a publishing firm, to vet the manuscript of a crime book based on a 90-year old murder. (This actually occurred in a 1979 short story entitled WHEN THE WEDDING WAS OVER, where Ireland is the new brother-in-law of the newly remarried Burden). A new character was also dreamed up, the adult daughter of Corinne Last.
1979	AN UNWANTED WOMAN	Adapted from two short stories: (1) a 1979 one originally titled CLUTCHING AT STRAWS and renamed OLD WIVES' TALES in the collection MEANS OF EVIL. Ninety–two–year-old Ivy Wrangton dies of apparently natural causes. However, district nurse Judith Radcliffe has her doubts. She tells Wexford that she has an instinct for death and that—despite her age—there was ‘no sign of death in Ivy Wrangton. And (2) a 1991 short story AN UNWANTED WOMAN from the collection THE COPPER PEACOCK about a 14 year old girl who moves in with a 65-year old neighbor who recently had tried to commit suicide, and the steps her mother takes to get her to return home. Also in this short story was a brief plot about someone pushing cyclists off their bikes in the vicinity of Myland Castle.	Adapted as a 2-part 1992 episode featuring Peter Copley and Roger Griffiths of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. The dramatization was fairly faithful to the 2 underlying short stories, except that Sgt. Martin assists the police in luring the cyclist-pusher, and Wexford, not Burden comes up with the revelation of a murder where suicide has been accepted.
1979	ACHILLES HEEL	Based on a short story published in MEANS OF EVIL: The Wexfords are holidaying in Yugoslavia when they encounter a rich young couple: Philip and Iris Blackstock. Wexford believes a substitution has been made, and the real Iris must be dead, so he returns alone with the local authorities to search for her body.	Adapted as a 1991 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. The TV dramatization was stretched beyond all recognition from the 31 page short story, where only Reg and Dora are holidaying in Yugoslavia (not the Burdens as well, and not in Corsica). A whole passel of new characters are introduced to pad this out to feature length and waste time with red herrings and comic interludes, plus a car chase is shoehorned into the ending, where the murderer gets his just desserts when trying to kill his accomplice.
1981	DEATH NOTES	Sir Manuel Camargue, the celebrated flautist, is discovered drowned in the grounds of his country estate. The death is believed to be a tragic accident but Wexford’s suspicions are aroused when Sir Manuel’s young fiancée claims that his estranged daughter—Natalie, who returned from Los Angeles to see her father shortly before his death—is an impostor	Adapted as a 1990 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES but retitled PUT ON BY CUNNING, the original British title. This is substantially faithful to the novel, except Sheila Wexford gets married in this novel, which isn't mentioned in the TV version, and Wexford takes Dora to California, using his vacation to check into whether Natalie Camargue was murdered, but in the TV version, Wexford alone goes and it's not made clear he does this on his own time. Later he and Burden go to France to arrest the murderer, but the TV version turns this into a hostage situation, with a more visually interesting outcome than the book. Again, I felt a director such as Hitchcock could have made a more exciting scene of the shocking revelation of the body in the storage trunk.
1983	SPEAKER OF MANDARIN	Chief Superintendent Howard Fortune sends his Uncle Reg on an official police visit to China. On his return to England, the Chief Inspector is called to the scene of a murder—a local woman—whom he met in China has been found shot in her own home. The killing forces Wexford to relive his experiences in China and eventually the memory of one particular event helps solve the case	Adapted as a 3-part 1992 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This was fairly faithful except for the scenes set in China, where Wexford has a precognitive and extremely accurate dream about a murder that has not yet taken place (not in the book) and the end, where the murderer pulls a gun on Wexford and Burden, who faces up to the killer (also not in the book).
1985	AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS	DCI Wexford believes that the disappearance of Rodney Williams is a simple case of a husband who has run off with another woman. But when his body is discovered, buried in a wood, investigations reveal the victim’s amazing double life.	Adapted as a 2-part 1990 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This was mostly faithful to the book, except for some trivial differences, cutting out twin members of the feminist group, having the body found by two young boys coming across a buried hand, rather than a dog digging up a foot, etc.
1988	GINGER AND THE KINGSMARKHAM CHALK CIRCLE	A baby is taken from a pram and another left in its place. Meanwhile, a spate of burglaries occurs which shows the trademark of a local ex-con.	This was a short story adapted as an episode starring Jane Horrocks of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES under the title NO CRYING HE MAKES. Based on a 42-page short story, this was fairly faithful in plot, but the time was changed to Christmas, and scenes added of Wexford with daughter Sylvia and his first grandson, and Burden's home life with his first wife and children.
1988	THE VEILED ONE	Sheila Wexford is arrested for cutting through wire on a nuclear missile base, Wexford narrowly escapes death in a car bomb attack and Inspector Burden has to take over the case of a woman found garroted in a Kingsmarkham mall car park.	Adapted as a 1980 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This is another adaptation that varied widely from the novel, particularly in an extended dream sequence to put you inside the mind of Wexford after his trauma experienced in the car bomb. The main thrust of the book was identifying the murder weapon by tracing the shopping done by the victim and potential perpetrators, but the TV adaptation didn't mention EITHER of these. There was a nice directorial touch when, suffering from guilt, Burden images he sees the man he has hounded as the face of his murdered mother merges with his youthful one. This reminded me of the end of PSYCHO where Hitchcock superimposed an almost subliminal skull over the face of the demented Norman Bates.
1992	KISSING THE GUNNER'S DAUGHTER	Four years after The Veiled One, Rendell's Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford returns in a superbly characterized, deftly plotted puzzler that explores the dark side of family life. A dinner-hour call for help brings Wexford and his assistants to Tancred House, where, in a chilling scene of carnage, he finds popular anthropologist and novelist Davina Flory, her husband, daughter and teenage granddaughter bleeding profusely from bullet wounds. Only young Daisy, who made the call, is alive. As she recovers, celebrates her 18th birthday and, in a willful, winning way, resumes living at Tancred House, Wexford tries to trace the two killers, who stole Davina's jewels as well. His investigation focuses first on the servants--a bitter couple whom Daisy soon dismisses, a handsome caretaker and a slow-witted neighborhood woman who later discovers the body of a local man, a petty blackmailer, hanging from a tree. While methodically seeking clues on the vast grounds of Tancred House and in nearby Kingsmarkham, Wexford is drawn to the plucky survivor, even as he grieves over his estrangement from his daughter Sheila, who is in love with an insufferable young novelist. For all the suspenseful pleasures of the plot, which includes arson and another murder, it's Rendell's characters, major and minor, who are standouts. This is among the very best from the accomplished, prolific author of The Veiled One and The Bridesmaid.	Adapted as a 2-part 1992 episode with Sean Pertwee, Jacqueline Tong and Stephen Macintosh of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This was a very faithful adaptation until the last 20 minutes or so, when through an early access to internet on a laughably creaky computer, Burden and Vine figure out the likely perpetrator; a cliched car chase and fisticuffs result. In the book, only Wexford's research established the killer, and the police come across the criminals quietly gloating over the stolen jewelry. Sasha Mitchell, who played DS Karen Malahyde in other Wexford adaptations, here played DC Carla Maynard. Queenie the cat was a large blue Persian in the book, but a white long haired cat with red spots in the TV version.
1995	MOUSE IN THE CORNER	Tom Peterlee, a member of a large family who live in three adjoining cottages, is murdered. Eva, his mother is quite cavalier in reaction to his death in Wexford's opinion and other family members are no more helpful. Heather, his widow, seems dumb with grief and his brother and meek sister-in-law are similarly evasive. Family friend Carol is more forthcoming, providing Heather with an alibi, but Wexford is sure one of the Peterlees is a killer. Burden has problems of his own when his daughter starts dating a married man and a series of ram-raids in Kingsmarkham add to Wexford's problems.	Adapted by George Baker from a short story in BLOOD LINES as a 1992 episode featuring Elizabeth Spriggs of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES.
1995	SIMISOLA	In her 17th mystery starring Chief Inspector Wexford, Rendell casts a decidedly baleful eye on changes in the Sussex country town of Kingsmarkham and its people---the appearance of slums, the rise of decidedly fascistic attitudes and growing unemployment and hopelessness among the young. Against this dour backdrop, Raymond Akande, a thriving black doctor, comes to Wexford with a problem: his 22-year-old daughter has disappeared. Wexford, as patient and friend (a somewhat uneasy friend, because a "decent'' Englishman of his generation cannot quite get used to blacks), feels bound to help. He uncovers a dark train of events: a girl who was apparently the last to see Melanie Akande alive is strangled; the body of another young black woman is found buried in the woods; and a sturdy Nigerian crossing guard is pushed down the stairs in her apartment block. Meanwhile, a flashy Arab lady running for the local council seems to be attempting to ensnare Wexford, and there is a mystery concerning one of her Filipino servants. The events are put together so methodically and believably, while the drawing of character and setting is so exact, that the book seems at times like a contemporary Middlemarch with a murder mystery at the heart of it. The solution is truly astonishing, yet as logical as the rest of this splendid, passionately fair-minded and deeply disturbing novel---in which Rendell surpasses even herself.	Faithfully adapted as a 3-part 1996 episode with Jane Lapotaire and Idris Elba of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES.
1997	ROAD RAGE	The latest Inspector Wexford tale from the redoubtable Rendell has a spectacularly unexpected twist. His wife, Dora, usually a sensible but taken-for-granted background decoration, moves to center stage as a kidnap victim. It's all part of a plot by aggressive defenders of the English landscape to forestall a planned bypass (read superhighway) through some of the lovelier scenery around Kingsmarkham, Wexford's stomping ground. These terrorists on behalf of nature take a group of hostages (Dora being accidentally among them) and threaten to kill them one by one unless their demands to end highway construction are met. Wexford is not stayed from pursuing the villains with his customary thoughtful vigor, but Dora's involvement gives him a whole new perspective on her importance in his life, and his anguish is made extremely moving. It is as human drama rather than conventional mystery that Rendell's books usually excel anyway, and this is no exception. The machinations of the highway saboteurs may be a bit hard to swallow, and the plot is wound up with a rather mechanical adroitness; but such eternal questions as enduring marital affection and love of the English countryside are the engines that make this Wexford outing move in Rendell's usual absorbing way.	Adapted as a 2-part 1998 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. My friend Nigel Pegram has a small role in this!
.1999	HARM DONE	In her latest Inspector Wexford mystery (following Road Rage), the prolific Rendell shows that, like Wexford, she too is a master of indirection. Like a stout, aging British Columbo, Wexford hides his intuition and keen powers of observation behind a rumpled, grandfatherly facade. Three of the cases that he unravels in this satisfyingly complex work have to do with the abuse of women or children. The crimes range from the ridiculous (a petulant university girl and a mentally challenged girl from a low-income housing project are each kidnapped to do housework and returned for ineptitude) to the monstrous (Wexford and his men must protect a child molester who was released from prison while a rich man tortures his wife in the comfort of his spacious home). Rendell is too realistic a writer to link her crimes together in a sensational way. Instead, each offense galvanizes a slew of colorful characters of all classes who live in the suburban community of Kingsmarkham. Wexford's daughter Sylvia, a strident volunteer for a battered women's shelter, fills in her father on the signs of abuse and abusers, and it is a measure of Rendell's subtle skill that she manages to address a social blight without ever losing track of her plot or flattening her characterizations. Thanks to Rendell's steadfast devotion to what is real over what is mere theory, what comes through in her 47th book is the unique human mystery at the heart of a crime.	Adapted as the last episode in 2000 of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. Karen Malahyde tracked down the kidnapper of the two young girls (whereas in the book, it was Lyn Fancourt), and Jerry, the young man for whom the kidnappings occurred, was schizophrenic in the book, but horribly scarred in a fire in the TV version. In the book, it was his aunt doing the kidnapping; in the adaptation, his mother. The book also had a subplot about the mob that forms to protest the pedophile throwing a Molotov cocktail which burns to death one of the Kingsmarkham policemen, and this is not in the adaptation. The daughter of the pedophile was killed in the adaptation when a brick hit her head, but in the book survives to relocate with her father to another town. The TV adaptation ascribes to Wexford a reluctance to arrest the murderer of the wife beater, that is not in the book, although she has his full sympathies.
2003	BABES IN THE WOOD	Wexford fans may be disappointed by the shortage of memorable characters in Rendell's latest mystery to feature the chief inspector, a solid, if not spectacular, entry in the series. As in her previous Wexford, the author explores issues of spousal abuse and focuses on a troubled married couple. The children of Katrina and Roger Dale disappear just as the city of Kingsmarkham is inundated with a flood of quasi-Biblical proportions. Both parents' reactions are somewhat bizarre, with Roger curiously antsy to be done with police questioning to get back to his job and Katrina quite certain her children have already drowned. When the children's babysitter, Joanna Troy, is found dead in a car dumped into a quarry, suspicion points to some icy fundamentalists. These people, from the Church of the Good Gospel, worship at the secluded country estate of Peter Buxton, a media tycoon. Buxton and his high-maintenance wife, the fashion model Sharonne, are among the most interesting fish in this rather bland school. The story becomes progressively more interesting after a slow start, and, as always, Chief Inspector Wexford remains a comfortable companion, with taut, thoughtful and imaginative observations about small-city England and the wider world.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2005	END IN TEARS	Bestseller Rendell's riveting new novel in her Chief Inspector Wexford series (The Babes in the Wood , etc.) links two disparate worlds—a child-surrogacy ring and the construction trade. A teenage mother, Amber Marshalson, is found dead in the grass outside her home in Kingsmarkham, her skull crushed by a piece of brick. A short time later, Amber's pregnant friend, Megan Bartlow, turns up murdered in a seedy, about-to-be-rehabbed Victorian row house. Suspicions center on a tall man wearing a hooded fleece jacket. Against this sinister backdrop stands Wexford, who's in lion-in-winter mode. He's irked and perplexed by modern life, by the casual way young girls conceive babies, by the sprawl devouring the once-lush Sussex countryside, even by his own fractious family. But he never loses the anger and dedication that propel him to solve crimes and understand evil. While Rendell fans may find this not quite up to the level of her most recent non-Wexford, Thirteen Steps Down (2005), they should be well satisfied.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2007	NOT IN THE FLESH	In bestseller Rendell's superb 21st Inspector Wexford mystery, the British police detective investigates first one, then two male bodies that turn up on the old Grimble property in the insular hamlet of Flagford. Who were these men? Are their deaths related? Older people fill this wise and nuanced story sleepy, bitter and disengaged since no current crime is at stake, just these two literal skeletons from the past. Among the suspects in the bizarre case are dying fantasy novelist Owen Tredown, who lives with two loopy women, Claudia and Maeve, his divorced first and second wives, in a hideous Victorian manor. Outside groups including members of the Somali community and itinerant fruit-pickers tantalize with their secrets and idiosyncrasies. The suspense persists until the book's final sentences, when the last pieces of the puzzle click elegantly yet unexpectedly into place.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2009	THE MONSTER IN THE BOX	In Edgar-winner Rendell's 22nd Inspector Wexford novel (after 2007's Not in the Flesh ), the British police detective confronts a man from his past, Eric Targo, who he suspects is guilty of multiple murders. Years earlier, Targo stalked and taunted Wexford, daring him to press charges. A squat, creepy bully with a purple birthmark disfiguring his neck, Targo has graduated from smalltime thug to prosperous businessman, ensconced in a nouveau-riche spread complete with private zoo and lion in Kingsmarkham. When Targo apparently commits a murder affecting Wexford's own family, the inspector must re-examine how Targo consistently outsmarts the law. The meeting and mating of Wexford and his wife, Dora, also figure in the backward-looking action. While the reminiscing dilutes some of the suspense, Rendell easily outdistances most mystery writers with her complex characters and her poetic yet astringent style.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2011	THE VAULT	In Rendell's fine follow-up to A Sight for Sore Eyes (1999), a non-Wexford novel in which a working-class aesthete's quest for beauty earned him an ugly, unexpected end, horror strikes the home improvement plans of Martin and Anne Rokeby. The couple are seriously disconcerted to discover multiple bodies in varying states of decay in a long-forgotten vault beneath their London garden. In the art world, the Rokebys' address is famous as the setting of a '70s-era masterpiece, Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place, a painting depicting a rock star and his girlfriend. Though Inspector Wexford has retired, the police soon summon him to help solve this most gothic case. Has more than one killer used the vault as a body dump? Rendell's recent style can feel a bit anemic when contrasted with that of A Sight for Sore Eyes, and she populates this sequel with people who resemble sketches rather than vivid, complex characters. Still, this easily outshines most of the competition on either side of the Atlantic.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2013	NO MAN'S NIGHTINGALE	In Rendell’s absorbing 24th Inspector Wexford novel (after 2011’s The Vault), the Kingsmarkham, England, sleuth tries to find out who strangled the Rev. Sarah Hussain in the vicarage of St. Peter’s Church, and why. The fact that Hussain was biracial and a single mother had galvanized bigots near and far, who resented her very existence as well as her modernizing the liturgy. When Wexford’s grandson, Robin, begins dating Sarah’s daughter, Clarissa, Robin gets entangled in identifying Clarissa’s sperm-donor father—further upping the ante for Wexford. Is a white power group responsible for killing Sarah, or had a personal relationship curdled into fury? Suspects abound: the shiftless depressive Jeremy Legg; the Anglican traditionalist Dennis Cuthbert; and Gerald Watson, a stuffy old flame of the murdered woman. Wexford’s strengths as a man and as a detective are his calmness and resilience. A serene atheist, he looks to the conscience of humanity and Britain’s flawed but well-intended laws to glean whatever justice can exist today.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.

Click here for more information on Rendell's Wexford episodes. For some reason, few of these ever appeared on American TV, nor have they been released to DVD, but luckily, quite a few of them are available for watching on YouTube.

BARBARA VINE NOVELS
Year	Title	Book	Film
1986	A DARK ADAPTED EYE	Largely set during World War II, the story is told by Faith Severn, who at the prompting of a true-crime writer recounts her memories of her aunt, the prim, fastidious, and snobbish Vera Hillyard. Vera's life is initially centered on her beautiful younger sister, Eden, even to the exclusion of her own son, Francis, with whom she has a poor relationship. Later, Vera has a second son, Jamie, to whom she is intensely devoted, while Eden marries the scion of a wealthy family. When Eden is unable to have children with her husband, she begins to demand custody of Jamie, who she claims is being poorly raised by Vera. To the bewilderment and shock of the rest of the family, the custody battle escalates to violent levels, leading to tragedy and a series of disturbing revelations.	Adapted as a 1994 film starring Helena Bonham Carter and Celia Imrie.
1986	BRIMSTONE WEDDING	Jenny's marriage is loveless, and she is having an affair. She works at an old people's home, where she is especially fond of Stella, a gracious, dignified woman dying of cancer - whose own secrets parallel Jenny's - with the difference that she may have been involved in murdering her lover's husband. Both a finely crafted mystery and a disturbingly honest depiction of the kinship between love and madness, The Brimstone Wedding tells an unsettling story about the power and the poison of love.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
1987	A FATAL INVERSION	A Dark-Adapted Eye first novel under the pseudonym Barbara Vine by the British author Ruth Rendell won the MBA Edgar. This is the second, a mystery like all her works, transcending the genre. Evoked in beautifully ambient writing, the setting is a rural estate, Wyvis Hall, which Adam Verne-Smith inherits at age 19. Inverting the word "someplace,'' Adam names his eden Ecalpemos where he revels through a summer with four companions. The months drift by until a horrible event scatters the lotus eaters, and Adam sells the property. For 10 years, the former friends live secure in the belief that they alone know their terrible secret. Then the present owners of Wyvis Hall dig a grave for their dog in the pet cemetery on the grounds and unearth human remains. Making headlines, the news stuns the Ecalpemos conspirators, long since established as proper London citizens. The author virtually defies one to pause between incidents in the exquisitely controlled developments that peak in a marvel of irony that no reader could foresee.	Adapted as a 3-part 1992 film, starring Jeremy Northam.
1989	THE HOUSE OF STAIRS	Who is the sad, reflective narrator, and what illness might she have? What hold does the tall, dark woman called Bell have on her? And what happened at the carefully described House of Stairs in London that sent Bell to prison? PW called this mystery ``profoundly memorable.''	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
1990	GALLOWGLASS	An emotional story of obsessive love, lust and fear. Joe is saved by Sandor, from committing suicide in front of an oncoming tube train. Sandor now demands his absolute loyalty and teaches Joe that he is now a 'gallowglass', a servant of a chief. So deep is Joe's gratitude that he helps with the kidnapping of a young wealthy married woman, Nina, that Sandor is obsessed with. His adoptive sister Tilly is also involved in the plot, which also involves the abduction of the daughter of Nina's bodyguard.	Adapted as a 3-part 1993 film, starring Paul Rhys and Michael Sheen.
1991	KING SOLOMON'S CARPET	A leisurely paced psychological thriller that teems with deftly drawn characters who inhabit a dark world centered in the London Underground and the people frequenting it. Vine's novel is inhabited by ordinary passengers, tube aficionados, pickpockets, buskers, vigilantes, and children who go "sledging" on the roofs of cars as an initiation rite. The title of the book refers to the legend of King Solomon's magic carpet of green silk which, as it could fly and brought everyone to their destination, is likened to the underground. King Solomon's Carpet is one of the few novels set in London which should be read with the help of a tube map. The novel is interspersed with extracts from Jarvis Stringer's (fictional) book on the London Underground. It won the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year in 1991.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
1993	ANNA'S BOOK	In an interview in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (January 28, 2002), Ruth talks about ANNA'S BOOK: It's called ASTA'S BOOK in England . . . I called her Asta, but my publisher at Harmony, an imprint of Random House, told me there were various things that disquieted him about the name because it was around the time Barbara Bush wrote that book about a dog . . . [MILLIE'S BOOK] And Asta was the dog in the old THIN MAN series. So I thought, oh, God, if everyone thinks this is a dog's diary, that's horrible! So that's why I changed the title. The couple in that book is not really my grandparents, but the stories and lifestyle are authentic family details. From the pen of Edgar-winner Ruth Rendell's suspense-writing doppelganger Vine ( A Dark-Adapted Eye ) comes a sixth adroitly fashioned novel of insidious psychological dimensions. Anna, an uncompromising Danish wife stranded by her husband in 1905 London, slyly scribbles tales of her hateful neighbors, boorish servant and absentee spouse while awaiting the birth of a baby. Half a century later, prompted by a poison pen letter, Anna tells her favorite daughter Swanny a half-riddle about her true parentage, but refuses to reveal the whole story, which is entangled with the murder of two women and the disappearance of a toddler. After frantically searching Anna's many diaries for clues to no avail, Swanny publishes them to great acclaim; after Swanny dies, her niece Ann picks up the thread binding three generations and families and follows it to a neatly executed conclusion. Vine skillfully braids the lives of the three women, but it is Anna's voice--puckish, angry, mysterious--that commands attention as fat red herrings are dangled, then tossed. While not as taut and chilling as Vine's--or Rendell's--best books, a mordant eye and textured accounts of turn-of-the-century London lend this novel a sharp edge.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
1994	NO NIGHT IS TOO LONG	"My life is a dull one,'' says Tim Cornish, narrator of much of this compelling thriller, which delivers such a dark picture of romantic love that murder seems its natural mate. Tim's workaday life in Suffolk as secretary for a cultural organization is mere counterpoint to the hours he spends writing about the affair he had with paleontologist Ivo Steadman. He hopes to rid himself of Ivo's ghost---just as, less than two years earlier when they were on an Alaskan cruise, he rid himself of Ivo by knocking him unconscious and leaving him for dead on an uninhabited island. The two had fought when Tim declared that he had fallen in love with the mysterious Isabel Winwood, whom he had recently met in Juneau. Tim, who had returned to England without contacting Isabel, believed his crime had gone undetected until he began receiving anonymous letters about castaways. Vine, the suspense-writing persona of Ruth Rendell, sets out what seems to be a full, straightforward picture. As the narrative progresses, however, she skillfully reaches back to add a point here or adjust a detail there to create a whole new, equally convincing, image. Another murder and further disclosures take this darkly romantic tale to a credible conclusion.	Adapted as a 2002 film, staring Marc Warren. This is another missed opportunity as a film; there is a revelation in the book which completely floored me when I read it; everything I had believed up to that point was overturned; this could have been such a great cinematic moment, with music welling up and the camera panning in on the face of the protagonist as he realizes he's been duped, but again zilch in the film. And the stranding of Ivo on an uninhabited Arctic waste could also have been amazingly cinematic, but it's just ploddingly depicted by the director, with no special directorial flourishes involving the disc number of the life jackets which are a key element of the crime. The book was an absolute page turner (and the film a damp squib), but the film is fairly faithful in plot, with only minor details changed; in the book, Tim writes his version of what happened to lay the ghost of Ivo, in the film, he tells it to his solicitor when he's been accused of Ivo's murder. The book has a happier ending as well.
1998	THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER'S BOY	When successful author Gerald Candless dies of a sudden heart attack, his eldest daughter Sarah is approached by her father's publisher with a view to writing a biography about his life. Sarah embarks on the memoir but soon discovers that her perfect father was not all he appeared to be, and that in fact he wasn't Gerald Candless at all. Candless' neglected wife Ursula gradually regains her self-confidence and begins a new relationship as she realizes that the unhappiness of her marriage was due, not to her own shortcomings, but to her husband's latent homosexuality — indeed the reason itself as to why her husband became 'Gerald Candless' in the first place.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2000	GRASSHOPPER	Writing under her Vine pseudonym, Ruth Rendell offers another of her intriguing, multifaceted psychological suspense novels. The narrator here is Clodagh Brown, who, as a child growing up in Suffolk, loved climbing trees, then steeples and eventually pylons whose steel arms carried electricity across nearby fields. Resembling giant grasshoppers from a distance, close-up they embodied high-voltage, lethal danger; indeed, a teenage Clodagh survives a tragic accident involving a pylon and her first love, Daniel, before she leaves home at 19 for college in London. She finds classes boring, whereas walks through Victorian neighborhoods, with five-story row houses, decorative cornices and quaint chimneys, enchant her. Clodagh almost forgets the claustrophobic terrors she's suffered since childhood until she collapses in a pedestrian underpass and is rescued by an archetypal savior named Silver. On the top floor of his mostly absent parents' home, Silver provides a haven for a disparate group: exotic Wim, mentor to would-be roof climbers; Liv, who, after an accident, can't face descending to street level; and amoral Jonny, who interests Silver because he is "a real life burglar." Silver has a small trust fund, so he's free to cultivate "the habit of happiness." He and Clodagh fall in love, and both become intrepid midnight roof climbers. As youthful idealists, they determine to help a couple harassed by tabloids accusing them of kidnapping a child. Their ill-fated attempt leads to a terrifying climax. Although readers know that Clodagh, a beguiling heroine, has survived to become a successful electrical engineer, and is newly married, the story of her youthful adventures is enthralling, and the conundrums she faces in her life because of her love of heights make for an ingenious story told by a master of suspense.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover. Yet another Rendell heroine with a phobia, this time claustrophobia.
2002	THE BLOOD DOCTOR	This rich, labyrinthine book by Vine (aka Ruth Rendell) concerns a "mystery in history," like her 1998 novel, The Chimney Sweeper's Boy. Martin Nanther—biographer and member of the House of Lords—discovers some blighted roots on his family tree while researching the life of his great-great-grandfather, Henry, an expert on hemophilia and physician to Queen Victoria. Martin contacts long-lost relatives who help him uncover some puzzling events in Henry's life. Was Henry a dour workaholic or something much more sinister? Vine can make century-old tragedy come alive. Still, the decades lapsed between Martin's and Henry's circles create added emotional distance, and, because they are all at least 50 years dead, we never meet Henry or his cohorts except through diaries and letters. Martin's own life—his wife's infertility and troubles with a son from his first marriage—is interesting yet sometimes intrudes on the more intriguing Victorian saga. Vine uses her own experience as a peer to give readers an insider's look into the House of Lords, at the dukes snoozing in the library between votes and eating strawberries on the terrace fronting the Thames. Some minor characters are especially vivid, like Martin's elderly cousin Veronica, who belts back gin while stonewalling about the family skeletons all but dancing through her living room. Readers may guess Henry's game before Vine is ready to reveal it, but this doesn't detract from this novel peopled by characters at once repellent and compelling.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2005	THE MINOTAUR	British master Vine (aka Ruth Rendell) explores life among the Cosways, a country gentry clan that makes the Wuthering Heights crowd look wholesome. Kerstin Kvist, a young Swedish nurse, takes a job at Lydstep Old Hall caring for John Cosway, a mathematical prodigy now labeled by his family as schizophrenic. In addition to John, there are four obsessive sisters ruled by their scarecrow-like matriarch. Gradually, Kerstin suspects that John is being drugged so that his mother and sisters can remain in their estate under the terms of a disputed trust. Vine creates a family and village, Windrose, so vivid you're tempted to book a B and B and investigate things yourself. Some scenes involving John's behavior—his fits and his family's reactions—seem abrupt to the point of being bizarre, but Vine is describing a man hijacked from rationality, through a narrator whose first language isn't English. When murder finally happens, it's simultaneously shocking yet inevitable. Though less elegantly written than 2002's The Blood Doctor , this delivers a more palpable, and thus satisfying, crime.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2008	THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT	It's late spring of 1990 and a love affair is flourishing: between Ivor Tesham, a thirty-three year old rising star of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, and Hebe Furnal, a stunning North London housewife stuck in a dull marriage. What excitement Hebe lacks at home, however, is amply compensated for by the well-bred and intensely attractive Tesham - an ardent womanizer and ambitious politician. On the eve of her twenty-eighth birthday, Tesham decides to give Hebe a present to remember: something far more memorable than, say, the costly string of pearls he's already lavished upon her. Involving a fashionable new practice known as 'adventure sex', a man arranges for his unsuspecting but otherwise willing girlfriend to be snatched from the street, bound and gagged, and delivered to him at a mutually agreed venue. Set amidst an age of IRA bombings, the first Gulf War, and sleazy politics, The Birthday Present is the gripping story of a fall from grace, and of a man who carries within him all the hypocrisy, greed and self-obsession of a troubled era.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.
2012	THE CHILD'S CHILD	When their grandmother dies, Grace and Andrew Easton inherit her sprawling, book-filled London home, Dinmont House. Rather than sell it, the adult siblings move in together, splitting the numerous bedrooms and studies. The arrangement is unusual, but ideal for the affectionate pair -- until the day Andrew brings home a new boyfriend. A devilishly handsome novelist, James Derain resembles Cary Grant, but his strident comments about Grace's doctoral thesis soon puncture the house's idyllic atmosphere. When he and Andrew witness their friend's murder outside a London nightclub, James begins to unravel, and what happens next will change the lives of everyone in the house. Just as turmoil sets in at Dinmont House, Grace escapes into reading a manuscript -- a long-lost novel from 1951 called The Child's Child -- never published, owing to its frank depictions of an unwed mother and a homosexual relationship. The book is the story of two siblings born a few years after World War One. This brother and sister, John and Maud, mirror the present-day Andrew and Grace: a homosexual brother and a sister carrying an illegitimate child. Acts of violence and sex will reverberate through their stories. The Child's Child is an ingenious novel-within-a-novel about family, betrayal, and disgrace. A master of psychological suspense, Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine, takes us where violence and social taboos collide. She shows how society's treatment of those it once considered undesirable has changed -- and how sometimes it hasn't.	No film adaptation I have been able to discover.

Click here for more information on Barbara Vine's titles.

Rendell short stories, some adapted for TV as part of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES, include:

Year

Title

Book

Film

1976

YOU CAN'T BE TOO CAREFUL

Adapted from the short story of the same name published in THE FALLEN CURTAIN. Prim businesswoman Della Galway has a compulsive penchant for double-locking doors but her new roommate is careless about security.

Adapted as a 1998 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This was fairly faithful to the story, but a date with a man at work was inserted, and the fact that a neighbor had been coshed by a burglar was omitted. Also, in the dramatization, Della is revealed to have been writing letters to her father who is no longer alive, and that was nowhere in the story.

1976

THE FALLEN CURTAIN

Adapted from the short story of the same name from the collection of the same name. When Richard was 8 years old, he disappeared for several hours leading to panic at home and a frantic search by the police. When he turns up unhurt everything is fine until he mentions he went for a ride with a man in his car. His mother assumes he was molested, even though there is no physical evidence to corroborate that. By the time he is 18, Richard is haunted by those events, even though he still remembers nothing. When he visits the site where his troubles all began and sees a young boy playing there, he invites the lad to go for a ride in his car. Slowly, he begins to recall the events of that fateful day.

Adapted as a 1999 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This adaptation was fairly faithful, except for the ending, where it is implied the grown up Richard is hassled by the police after he has relived his boyhood experience.

1976

PEOPLE DON'T DO SUCH THINGS

This is a short story from the 1976 collection THE FALLEN CURTAIN. Terence and Gwen Carter are a conventional married couple, disapproving of the womanizing ways of Reeve Baker, Terence's friend and tax accountant. Terence is shocked, then, when Gwen tells him that she and Reeve are in love and plan to go off together. Despite her husband's entreaties she leaves him but soon afterwards is found murdered. All the evidence points to Reeve as the perpetrator and he is duly sent for trial. Did he kill her or was he framed? Either way, people don't do such things...or do they?

Made as a 1985 episode of TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED starring Arthur Hill and Samantha Eggar, which was faithful to the short story.

1976

THE DOUBLE

Adapted from the short story of the same name published in THE FALLEN CURTAIN. A virginal 17 year old, out with her older fiance, comes across a 30 year old who looks like her. Because her mother has taken her to mediums and spiritualists, the girl believes that she will die within a year of meeting her doppelganger.

Adapted as a 1997 episode of the the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This adaptation was wildly changed from the short story; in the TV version, the two women were played by the same actress, so the 13-year difference in age was ignored. Also on TV, the older woman was very seductive and almost supernatural, but in the story, she is just a mundane music therapist and doesn't immediately seduce the fiance. The whole subplot of the fiance being a stockbroker and getting fired for a bad investment is also invented for the adaptation. In the end, the young woman commits suicide and is not murdered by her double, as in the TV drama.

1978

THE NEW GIRLFRIEND

This is a short story from the 1978 collection of the same name about a man who enjoys dressing up in women's clothes whose wife is away for the weekend, so he goes out with her girlfriend, who is afraid of men.

Very liberally transformed into a 2014 French film NOUVELLE AMIE, where only the central concept of transvestism has been kept. The film is fleshed out with other characters not in the short story and goes in a completely different direction, with no murder at the end.

1978

LOOPY

This is a short story from the 1978 collection THE NEW GIRLFRIEND about a man whose mother makes him a realistic wolf costume for a production of LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD, but who finds it enjoyable and freeing to romp about in the costume after the show.

Made into a 2004 short I've never seen, starring Michael Countryman and Elizabeth Franz.

1978

A DARK BLUE PERFUME

Adapted from the short story of the same name in the collection THE NEW GIRLFRIEND. A middle-aged man moves back to his home town where his ex-wife, whom he divorced 40 years ago, may still live.

Adapted as a 1997 episode starring Susannah York and John Castle of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This has been messed about with in all but the central conceit. There is no Susannah York character in the story, nor her husband nor the nosy neighbor. Castle's character had not been in jail for attempted murder of his wife. The dark blue perfume of the title, never explained in the TV adaptation, is the odor of hyacinths.

1978

THE ORCHARD WALLS

Adapted from the short story of the same name published in THE NEW GIRLFRIEND. During World War II a London teenager, Jenny, is sent to spend the summer in the countryside where she will be safe. Staying with relatives she has not seen since she was a young child is initially daunting, but they are basically a kind family and they treat her well. One of her uncles is serving in North Africa and his very pretty wife is clearly unhappy. As events unfold, Jenny learns that she is having an affair. Jenny herself is at a age where romance is important and she develops a crush on a recuperating RAF pilot. As these complex relationships develop, tragedy ensues.

Adapted as a 1998 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This was fairly faithfully adapted, except for the revelation of the body of the aunt's lover occurs 40 years in the future, the short story being a flashback.

1978

BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION

Adapted from the short story of the same name from THE NEW GIRLFRIEND. A recent college graduate Nicholas takes a date to a post restaurant he does not have the funds to afford. While there, he spots Sorensen, the former employer of his father with a woman not his wife,. This man pays Nicholas' bill. The boy is upset about this and goes to Sorensen's office to repay him, when he discovers the money was a bribe to elicit Nicholas' silence about the woman with whom Sorensen was dining.

Adapted as a 2-part 1996 episode starring Paul Freeman of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. This was bent out of its short story shape. In the story there is no love affair between Mrs. Sorensen and Nicholas' father; there is no puppy love by Nicholas of the woman either. Nicholas' date disappears from the story after the meal. There is no chauffeur involved at all. Instead, the irony is that Sorensen bribes Nicholas not to mention he was at the restaurant with another woman. Mrs. Sorensen is found murdered, and the police go to Nicholas to confirm Sorensen's alibi, Nicholas refuses, because he promised Sorensen he would tell no one Sorensen was there.

1982

A GLOWING FUTURE

This is a short story from the 1982 collection THE FEVER TREE about a man who has left his girlfriend for a year he's spent in Australia. When he returns, she believes they will marry and have a life together, but he has just come to pack up his furniture and clothing.

Made as a 1981 episode of TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED starring Joanna Pettit and John Beck. I would hope the short story is not as dull and predictable as this TV adaptation.

1982

A CASE OF COINCIDENCE

Adapted from the short story of the same name from the collection THE FEVER TREE. In 1953, a nymphomaniac married to a heart surgeon goes off for a dirty weekend. Her strangled body is later found near the home of a simple-minded illiterate country man, where objects are discovered belonging to his previous 4 victims, so he is charged with the murder and hanged.

Adapted as a 2-part 1996 episod e of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. Another short story padded out and changed. In the original, the doctor's wife is named Norah Lestrange, not Sarah Quinn. She appears to be the latest strangling victim in Wrexlade, but her husband confesses to the crime. However, because of the coincidence of the murder taking place nearby the home of the murderer of the previous 4 women, and 4 weeks after the last murder, the police don't believe him and say it is common for overworked, overwrought, emotional people to confess to murders they haven't done. There is no prior relationship between the last victim and the simple minded man hanged for her murder, as there was in the TV adaptation.

1982

THORNAPPLE

Adapted from the short story of the same name from the collection THE FEVER TREE. Twelve-year-old James lives with his parents and sister. He has a scientific mind and a load of jars, all containing poisons which he has manufactured from plants in the garden - his favorite being Thornapple. When cousin Mirabel and her baby come to stay, James is captivated by Mirabel, who has been rejected by her boyfriend. Mirabel's aunt June, who had also rejected her, suddenly puts her into her good books again, but when June dies, supposedly of gastric complications and leaving Mirabel a large sum of money, James has his doubts as to the true cause of death.

Adapted as a 1997 episode starring Susan Penhaligon of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. I saw this quite a number of years ago, and recently reread the quite long short story, and it seems to me the dramatization was pretty faithful, except the character played by Penhaligon is called Beth, not Mirabel.

1982

MAY AND JUNE

Adapted from the short story of the same name from the collection THE FEVER TREE. After a lifetime of sibling rivalry, mousy May accepts an invitation from her recently-widowed younger sister June, to live with her in her elegant home

Adapted as a 2-part 1997 episode of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. Another story bent out of shape in the adaptation. There is no gentleman friend of June's that May competes for after the death of the man they both loved. May forgives her sister for stealing her fiance, until she finds a love letter he wrote, saying June was the only woman he ever loved. She then shoots June to death with a gun left by a fleeing burglar, and the police believe the burglar was the murderer.

1982

FRONT SEAT

Adapted from the short story of the same name from the collection THE FEVER TREE. Cecily Banksome drags her husband, who wants to holiday in Spain, to a local seaside town, where she sees an elderly woman, Mrs. Jones, sitting on a bench. A local man, Arnold Cottle, tells her that the bench was donated by a man acquitted for the murder of his wife back in the 1930s. Cecily assumes justice was thwarted and sets out to rectify things, much to the dismay of her husband.

Adapted as a 1997 episode starring Richard Johnson and Janet Suzman of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES. Another short story bent out of its original shape. In the story, Cecily is not in her hometown and Arnold Cottle is not an old friend, just a chancer who insinuates himself with holidaymakers. Cecily and her husband do not buy a house. The little old lady, Mrs. Jones, who sits on the bench and whom Cecily believes assisted Rupert Moore in the murder of his wife, was actually married to the artisan who carved the bench. While Cecily's husband is sorely tempted to kill her, there is no actual attempt to poison her fish salad.

1995

THE STRAWBERRY TREE

Adapted from a short story of the same name found in BLOOD LINES. When she was a young girl on the island of Majorca Petra Summerton was traumatized by the events of the Summer when her beloved older brother Piers and his cousin Rosario, to whom he was getting married, disappeared. Now she is middle-aged Petra still finds it hard to get over the situation.

Adapted as a 2-part 1995 episode starring Eleanor Bron of the 80-part TV series RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES.

What appeals to me about Rendell's writing is the way she is able to convey sympathy and identification with her criminals by making you see the world through their eyes. She does this with an accretion of detail which, at the beginning of some of the books, is sometimes tedious, but which eventually is very suspenseful, because you know something is going to happen, but you don't necessarily know when or (sometimes) to whom. And it all unfolds before you and there is nothing you can do to warn the eventual victim.

I think the reason I prefer her psychological thrillers to her Wexfords is that, at its heart, her writing is not about detection, and so her continuing detective characters, Wexford and Burden, are a lot less interesting than her other characters which show up for only a single book. The Wexfords are not really "police procedural" in the way that, for example, Ed McBain's 87th PRECINCTs are. Instead, her writing is about the events that push people over the edge to commit crimes, and which show that there but for the grace of God, go you or I. Too often, Wexford gets an insight (sometimes from reading a book) which he doesn't bother revealing to Burden (and therefore to the reader) until he confronts the perpetrator with his theory. There is no playing fair and giving the reader enough clues to solve the crimes on their own.

Like Agatha Christie with Poirot, Rendell made the mistake of setting Wexford's age too old for her long writing career. She tells us that he is 20 years older than Burden, and in SOME LIE AND SOME DIE (1973), she reveals his age as 60, describing him as almost bald. Yet she went on to write 16 more Wexford novels, through 2011, 38 years before he finally retired in THE VAULT.

Despite my enjoyment of her books, it is a surprise to me so many of them have been dramatized because her plots generally occur over a long time and her novels consist of conversations and interior dialogues which would be difficult if not impossible to convey visually; they would require narration, which is often awkward. The miniseries version of GALLOWGLASS has quite a bit of narration and is not particularly enthralling compared to the book.

In addition, unlike most mystery novels, there are generally not a series of murders in Rendell's plots; and the thrust of the writing is almost never to figure out who the murderer is. It is more about the inevitability of a tragedy occurring which is often set off by something very minor but which builds and builds until the "straw which breaks the camel's back".

Ruth's masterpieces, in my opinion, include LAKE OF DARKNESS, A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES, NO NIGHT IS TOO LONG, 13 STEPS DOWN, ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME and PORTOBELLO. KEYS TO THE STREET is a tour de force of misdirection, all the clues are there for you to see that Mary Jago is intimately surrounded by the worst sort of criminals, but doesn't realize it. You need to reread it after all as been revealed in the final chapters.

Just contrasting the suspense and horror of the events in A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES with the Wexford sequel where the bodies are found, THE VAULT, demonstrates the superiority of her psychological thrillers over her Wexfords. My favorite of her short stories is LOOPY, which is more comedic than her usual ones, and a bit reminiscent of Saki. There's no doubt in my mind that any book of Ruth's is worth double the film version.

Certain themes show up in Rendell's various books:

the use of Tarot cards, people deluded by horoscopes or similar superstition; ghosts, or actually mental illness in which people believe they are haunted
psychologically frail heroines, whom you want to slap and say, stand up for yourself, being reasonable isn't going to work with this bully
mental illness of a family member, and the burdens and strains it causes close relatives and loved ones
serial murderers who collect trinkets from their victims
people, misled by assumptions they have made about others, when confronted with the truth, lash out violently
strict upbringing of children, or withholding affection, making them into obedient robots who rebel in adulthood, prone to phobias, neuroses or rituals
kidnapping, sometimes of adults but also of babies or toddlers
the inequity of romantic relationships, often expressed as one loving and one letting himself be loved, or one kissing and one letting herself be kissed
Ruth often misled readers as to the identity of a murder victim, concealing the name until a later revelation

Many of the books feature dreams of the principal characters; most provide extensive architectural descriptions and detailed horticultural names, many in Linnaean taxonomy. In several books, there is a character who always counts the number of steps on any staircase. Cats, unimportant to the plot, but cats show up with some regularity: Peach, Bathsheba, Queenie, the Pensive Selima, among many. Her books reflected British multiculturalism with black, Indian, Muslim, Pakistani and other characters, even in a rural town as small as Kingsmarkham. Ruth generally provided detailed descriptions of what her chief characters wore; in her early works, she often named portraits from museums or art books they resembled, but in her later books, she referred to celebrities: Philip Wardman in THE BRIDESMAID looked like Paul McCartney; Mary Gage from A FATAL INVERSION like a young Elizabeth Taylor; the learning challenged Will Cobbett from THE ROTTWEILER a chunkier David Beckham; Tim Cornish from NO NIGHT IS TOO LONG a young Robert Redford; Harvey Copeland from KISSING THE GUNNER'S DAUGHTER like Paul Newman; and Zillah from ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME resembled Catherine Zeta-Jones. Bibi Martin, girlfriend of Andrew Struther from ROAD RAGE, resembled Cruella de Vil; and Burden's youngest son Marc remarked Wexford resembled Badger from WIND IN THE WILLOWS.

Ruth seemed fond of choosing often obscure vocabulary, words such as gallowglass, philoprogenitive, eonism, flocculant, comminatory, tussore, crepitation, motte, periphrasis, matutinal, karst, strow, orchidaceous, weltschmerz, barathea, psychopomp, supererogatory, deckle, pelisses, glabrous, teratomancy, Pathan, psephological, maté, pedopsychiatrician, lincrusta, pharos, moquette, tetragonal, caddis, guerdon, vespacide, tetanic, punkahs, draggle, iridian, barratrous, ayurvedic, farouche, vanitory, allotropes, camions, phthisic, gammers, marmoreal, somniferous, kif, ectomorph, cantrip, chelonaphobia, punnet, locknit, slub, tattwas, hieratic, trumpery, supernal, skep, imperatorial, cairngorms, tazzas, matrilinear, carious, runnelled, tregetour, hecatomb, eleemosynary, valetudinarian, hypothecation, frigatoon, abortifacients, downland, reticulation, pytle, everted, zeugma, syllepsis, tribadism, troilism, myopotamus, charas, dupatta, iridology, eosophobia, animists, rooibos, periphrastic, sigmodonts, metaplasm, cotch, etiolated, plinthologist, couvade, parure, abaya, huckaback, titivate, percipience, inanition, half-hunter, demotic, moujik, prolificity, aorist, phocine, ontogeny, buhl, intracrural, twitchers, faience, equinoctial, rebarbative, subfusc, midden, conurbations, trews, leoporine, bouclé, myxoedema and uxorious---seldom found in any novel---crop up in hers and send me scurrying for my dictionary. In addition, architectural terms such as garderobes, bucranium, ashlar, pargeting, putlocks or clerestories; horticultural terms such as umbelliferous, muscarine, kanzan, espaliered or bracts; medical terms such as epiphyses, acromion, periosteum, ischial, tuberosities; or exotic foods such as bacalao, gambas, cherimoya, coulis, tartufo, dhansaak and dahin. Never use medicine where medicament will do; why employ honeysuckle when you can opt for lonicera; don't cite rectangle, when you can use trapezium; never say yellow, when you can baffle readers with gamboge. She was not above inventing words, at least ones I can't find in a dictionary, such as inscientious, philonomatous, fandarole, manicuraphile.

I admire her ability to invent real sounding place names: Kingsmarkham, Cheriton Forest, Myringham, Myfleet, Pomfret, Stowerton, Forby, Sewingbury, Flagford, Vangemoor all sound like actual places to me. I also admire the character names she invented: Hob, Pup, Bean, Dex, Sonovia, Zosie, Ismay, Mivvy, Rosalba, Rabia, Vesta, Nesta, Mopsa, Morna, Mungo, Mix, Minty, Montsy, Silver, Spinny, Javy, Zeinab, Zillah---each more vivid than the last. Burden's wife was called Janina, and his two in-laws Amyas and Cunegonde! Wexford's granddaughters from his actress daughter Sheila were named Amulet and Anoushka! Minor characters from THE BABES IN THE WOOD, a priest of a cult religion and his wife, have the sci fi names of Jashub and Tekla! I did not admire much the constant larding of often obscure quotes in Inspector Wexford's conversations and thoughts.

There are "inside jokes" or at least easily-missed references in some books; Amyas Ireland, Burden's brother-in-law who edits books for a publishing house, is mentioned in passing in TREE OF HANDS, and Howard Fortune, Wexford's cop nephew, in A DEMON IN MY VIEW. Dolly's father in THE KILLING DOLL reads an historical novel by Grenville West, the murdered author from A SLEEPING LIFE. The mother of the illiterate Eunice from A JUDGEMENT IN STONE suffered from multiple sclerosis, as did Ruth's own mother. Joanne Garland, from KISSING THE GUNNER'S DAUGHTER, was afflicted with punctuality addiction, which burdened Rendell herself.

Ruth won 3 Edgar awards, for THE FALLEN CURTAIN, THE NEW GIRLFRIEND (short stories), and A DARK ADAPTED EYE. She was named Grand Master in 1997.

Rendell's books are not easily synopsized and can be challenging to read; some of them contain a large number of characters (over 100 in ASTA'S BOOK, for example). She tended not to bother putting ellipses when she changed from one point of view to another, from flashbacks to the present. I am contacted from time to time by people who are doing reports on her for their homework, and who, basically, want me to falsify their homework for them, and I don't, so if you are such a student, please do not contact me. I also have no biographical information about her; so try the library.

However, I will give you an idea to develop. It seems to me in all Rendell's fiction, a common element is how lives are changed by very casual things, a decision, a coincidence, a chance meeting. I believe all of Rendell's works are cautionary tales of how easy it is to ruin lives by doing something, or failing to do something, that in and of itself is of no great moment, but which sets you down a road from which there is no return.

If you are new to Ruth Rendell and want a suggestion of a book to start, my choice is LAKE OF DARKNESS. Unlike many of her books which jump backwards and forwards in time, this was written in an almost completely linear fashion. As with most of her novels, it cuts between two sets of characters who pass each other in the course of the book but don't actually meet up until nearly the end when a death occurs. It is atypical of Rendell in that one of the characters actually explains to another quite late in the book everything that has occurred so far - something which I don't think you'll find in any other of her books. It's also a fast book to read compared to some of the others that seem to take longer to get rolling.

When asked about whether she has seen and enjoyed the TV adaptations based on her work, Ruth said that the Pedro Almodovar version of LIVE FLESH is very loosely based, but rather a good film. The best one that the BBC did was A FATAL INVERSION. The BBC is now doing NO NIGHT IS TOO LONG, and I have high hopes for it.

In an interview with Marianne MacDonald filed April 11, 2005, to publicize her latest Barbara Vine THE MINOTAUR, MacDonald writes: Ruth Rendell had a terrible childhood and her adulthood has been tempestuous. But does this help to explain her twin obsessions, psychopaths and punctuality?

Rendell is 75, fit and upright, incredibly young-looking for her age, with a humor dry as a French chablis. Her hair is dyed ashy blonde; her eyes are unusually blue.

She says: I do empathize with people who are driven by dreadful impulses. I think to be driven to want to kill must be such a terrible burden. I try, and I think I succeed, in making my readers feel pity for my psychopaths, because I do.

When she was asked nine years ago if she was writing from experience about psychopaths, a long pause ensued. I could hardly have reached my age and not suffered terrible unhappiness, distress and breakdown, Rendell replied. We all go through it, unless we are extremely dull or insensitive. I didn't have the sort of breakdown that caused one to be hospitalized, but perhaps today it would.

We are in the downstairs living-room. The drawing-room window overlooks shark-like black houseboats on the canal; but the living-room backs on to the garden, where Rendell's ginger tom, Archie, is forced to endure a pitched battle with the tigerish bengal tom from next door. Black bookcases frame hundreds of volumes. The open-plan kitchen is cream, the coffee-table covered in books - volume three of Proust's In Search of Lost Time (the new translation), Philip Roth, Suetonius.

Rendell's phobias seems to be the legacy of her Swedish mother, Ebba, who fell ill with multiple sclerosis that went undiagnosed for years. She and Rendell's father, Arthur Grasemann (they were both school teachers based in east London), had a terrible marriage, continually shrieking at each other, giving each other the silent treatment and threatening to leave. A sensitive only child, Rendell seems to have found the atmosphere terrifying. In self-defense she created an inner voice that described what was going on as if it was a story, and so her writing began. But the fear remained, streaming out in her terror of being late, her need to keep busy, and her obsession with routine. She often says that she doesn't think any families are ever happy and that the world is an amoral place.

Ruth Rendell published her first novel, FROM DOON WITH DEATH, when she was 34. She had started writing after getting married at 20 and having a baby. She had been fired from her first job on the South Woodford local newspaper for writing up the tennis club's annual jamboree without mentioning that the chairman dropped dead while making his speech. The man she married was Don Rendell, her boss on the paper. They stayed together until he died of prostate cancer six years ago, bar a tumultuous period in her mid-forties where she left him, plunged into an affair and then went back and remarried him.

She gets up at 6am, lets the cats out, works out on her exercise machines, and writes from 8.30am to noon. Plots never dry up.

Something happens. I read something or somebody tells me something and the idea is started. I got the idea for THE MINOTAUR, for instance, from, thinking, "How would it be for a family who had one member with an illness they completely misdiagnosed and they blamed this person, and eventually it was discovered what it was? And then what happens, in what is fashionably called the dysfunctional family?

On October 5, 2005, Dinita Smith wrote in the NEW YORK TIMES: In 1997 Rendell became Baroness Rendell of Babergh. She writes in the mornings, then attends the House of Lords when it is in session. She shows her work to only one person before sending it to her publisher, she said, a fellow Peer whom she will not name. Her average is three books every two years.

In A NEW LEASE OF DEATH, Ruth revealed that Kingsmarkham is a market town of some twelve thousand inhabitants; in AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS, the population was given as 78,000. Kingsmarkham was based on the West Sussex town of Midhurst, although Romsey in Hampshire was the site for the TV adaptations with George Baker.

On the SIMISOLA DVD, there was a 45 minute extra (which originated as a 2006 ITV special) about the series in which it was revealed Rendell only gave the rights to one Wexford book at a time, and while she didn’t want to do the adaptations herself, she worked closely with the producers/adapters. She didn’t mind them changing the plot, but they weren’t allowed to tinker with the characters. I don’t believe a US TV network would commission a series on the basis that the rights to each story had to be negotiated with the author, based on how well they adapted the previous story! The Wexford novels and short stories were filmed and broadcast over 13 years.

An interesting DAILY MAIL article here published shortly after Ruth died following a second stroke in May 2015.

In early July 2015, BBC 4 Extra reran a 1994 interview of Ruth Rendell by a clinical psychiatrist. She refused to talk about why she remarried her husband Don (who was still alive at the time of the interview), but she said many interesting (to me) things that I identified with. That she was afraid of people and it was an ordeal for her to attend parties, even though she had attended hundreds of them. Also that she had a compulsion to be punctual (which I have), and often arrived in time to take a train earlier than the one she set out to take. That there was a horrible anxiety attached with the feeling of possibly being late, out of proportion to the possibility. (I certainly have that. That apart, the only things we seem to have in common is that she was an only child of ill-suited parents, and lived in her own head a lot.) She was 64 when she gave this interview.

She had recurring dreams which were frightening to her. One in which she was walking through a strange house past lots of furniture and became more and more frightened, and one in which she (who was never ill and didn't take any medicines) had the feeling there was some medicine she should have taken and had to find to take immediately. I wonder if this was her subconscious suggesting she take some prophylactic blood thinners like aspirin to stave off strokes.

THE BOOKS AND FILMS OF RUTH RENDELL

THE BOOKS AND FILMS
OF RUTH RENDELL