Ruth Rendell
1) Harm done
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In Britain, a pedophile's house is burned by an angry mob when a girl disappears, the man having been recently released from jail. But Inspector Wexford is not swayed by the obvious and traces the disappearance to the girl's home and her abusive father.
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In the waning months of the Second World War, a group of children discover an earthen tunnel in their neighborhood.Throughout the summer of 1944--until one father forbids it--the subterranean space becomes their "secret gardens," where the friends play games and tell stories. Six decades later, beneath a house on the same land, construction workers uncover a tin box containing two skeletal hands, one male and one female. As the discovery makes national...
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When the body of the first victim is discovered, the bite mark on her neck prompts the media to name the killer "The Rottweiler". But as the death toll rises, it becomes clear that the bite mark was incidental. For, what distinguishes this killer is not bite marks but rather his taking a small trinket from each of his victims as a macabre souvenir. Focusing their investigation near Lisson Grove, the ethnically diverse London neighborhood where all...
6) Death Notes
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Chief Inspector Wexford mysteries volume 11
Pub. Date
c1981
Description
Music has a deadly melody when murder is at hand.
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Mix Cellini (which he pronounces with an 'S' rather than a 'C') is superstitious about the number 13. In musty old St. Blaise House, where he is the lodger, there are thirteen steps down to the landing below his rooms, which he keeps spick and span. His elderly landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, was born in St. Blaise House, and lives her life almost exclusively through her library of books, so cannot see the decay and neglect around her. The Notting Hill...
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Jock Lewis was supposed to have died in that terrible train crash at Paddington. Minty, his girlfriend, received a letter from Great Western telling her so. But, curiously, the police haven't been in touch. And Jock has borrowed all her savings...Zillah also got a letter from the railway company, informing her that her husband, Jerry Leach, was dead. Something about the letter struck her as suspicious, but she chooses not to mention her doubts to...
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A young woman in London faces the prospect of a deadly thank you in return for an act of selfless generosity. She is Mary Jago who donates her bone marrow to save the life of a man she does not know. As her grandmother puts it, some people dislike those who have done them a service.
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Chief Inspector Wexford mysteries volume 20
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A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But only for a while ... One particular member of the local press is gunning for the Chief Inspector, distinctly unimpressed with what he regards as old-fashioned police methods. But Wexford, with his old friend and partner, Mike Burden, along with two new recruits to the Kingsmarkham team, pursue...
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On Valentine's Day, four members of the Coverdale family--George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles--were murdered in the space of 15 minutes. Their housekeeper, Eunice Parchman, shot them, one by one, in the blue light of a televised performance of Don Giovanni. When Detective Chief Superintendent William Vetch arrests Miss Parchman two weeks later, he discovers a second tragedy: the key to the Valentine's Day massacre hidden within a private humiliation...
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[2010]
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Walking to the shops one day in London's Notting Hill, fifty-year-old Eugene Wren discovers an envelope on the street bulging with cash. A man plagued by a shameful addiction, 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...
17) Not in the flesh
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When the truffle-hunting dog starts to dig furiously, his master's first reaction is delight at the size of the clump the dog has unearthed; at the going rate, this one truffle might be worth several hundred pounds. Then the dirt falls away to reveal not a precious mushroom but the bones and tendons of what is clearly a human hand. Chief Inspector Wexford tries to piece together events that took place eleven years earlier, a time when someone was...
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Chief Inspector Wexford mysteries volume 17
Pub. Date
1997
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Chief Inspector Wexford and his team of police officers race against time to learn the identity of a group of environmental terrorists who have kidnapped and are threatening to kill five hostages, one of whom is Wexford's wife, Dora.
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Inspector Wexford volume 19
Pub. Date
c2002
Description
A riviting story that alternates between Chief Inspector Wexford's domestic life--his worries about the security of his home and his daughter's odd new boyfriend--and his determination to see through a kaleidoscope of lies and bring a murderer to justice.