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The Vault

The Vault

by RuthRendell (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2011

    $3.25
Synopsis

The twenty-third book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford. The impossible has happened. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired from the crime force. He and his wife, Dora, now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and a coachhouse in Hampstead, belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila. Wexford takes great pleasure in his books, but, for all the benefits of a more relaxed lifestyle, he misses being the hand of the law. But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything. Tom Ede is now a Detective Superintendent, and is very keen to recruit Wexford as an adviser on a mysterious murder case. The bodies of two women and a man have been discovered in the old coal hole of an attractive house in St John's Wood. None of the corpses carry identification. But the man's jacket pockets contain a string of pearls, a diamond and a sapphire necklace as well as other jewellery valued in the region of GBP40,000. To Wexford, this is definitely a case worth coming out of retirement for. He is intrigued and excited by the challenge, but unaware that this new investigative role will bring him into extreme physical danger...

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 272
 Publisher: Hutchinson
Published: 04 Aug 2011
ISBN 10: 0091937108
ISBN 13: 9780091937102
Book Overview: The twenty-third book in the bestselling Detective Chief Inspector Wexford series, from the author of classic detective fiction and gripping psychological thrillers including End in Tears and Thirteen Steps Down.

Media Reviews
Unequivocally, the most brilliant mystery writer of our time. She magnificently triumphs in a style that is uniquely hers and mesmerising -- Patricia Cornwell Ruth Rendell is a marvel, and in the latest Inspector Wexford mystery she's on cracking form ... The book's pacing is perfect. It starts gently as we, like Wexford, enjoy his new life of leisure. But once he puts his formidable brain to work, the violence kicks in. The result is a total page-turner - and one of Rendell's very, very best novels. -- A.N. Wilson Reader's Digest The Vault sees Rendell for the first time marry the two genres she is master of: the psychological thriller and the police whodunit ... With 60 novels put to page and still counting, Rendell will soon match the prolific output of Agatha Christie - who penned 66 works. It's hard to imagine where the inspiration comes from, but find it she does - and there's not a clue out of place or a shoehorned plotline in sight. Time Out Ruth Rendell is bidding fair to join Defoe and Dickens in creating one of the great criminal cities of literature. Her view of London is a similar murderous topography, less squalid, but with the same tentacles reaching out between rich and poor ... This mystery is also an enormously enjoyable panorama of London and a hymn of love to its Georgian houses ... She, and Wexford are the sharpest modern observers of the Great Wen Independent The Vault, as a sort-of-sequel is a bold attempt to combine Rendell's two chosen specialties: the police procedural and the psychological thriller. No one hides the clues better than her; no one else creates such a pervasive atmosphere of almost comic disgust and dread. The act of cross pollination proves most fruitful and triumphantly demonstrates that a vault, in addition to being an underground chamber, can also be a leap of imagination. Evening Standard
Author Bio
Ruth Rendell is the Queen of British crime writing. The author of over 50 novels, she has won many significant crime fiction awards. Her first novel, From Doon With Death, appeared in 1964, and since then her reputation and readership have grown steadily with each new book. She has received major awards for her work; three Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America; the Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Award for 1976's best crime novel, A Demon in My View; the Arts Council National Book Award for Genre Fiction in 1981 for The Lake of Darkness; the Crime Writer's Gold Dagger Award for 1986's best crime book for Live Flesh; in 1987 the Crime Writer's Gold Dagger Award for A Fatal Inversion and in 1991 the same award for King Solomon's Carpet, both written under the pseudonym Barbara Vine; the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990; and in 1991 the Crime Writer's Cartier Diamond Award for outstanding contribution to the crime fiction genre. Her books are translated into 21 languages. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.