The Monster in the Box - Hardcover

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Ruth Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, and will be remembered as a legend in her own lifetime. Her groundbreaking debut novel, From Doon With Death, was first published in 1964 and introduced the reader to her enduring and popular detective, Inspector Reginald Wexford, who went on to feature in twenty-four of her subsequent novels.

With worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, Rendell was a regular Sunday Times bestseller. Her sixty bestselling novels include police procedurals, some of which have been successfully adapted for TV, stand-alone psychological mysteries, and a third strand of crime novels under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. Very much abreast of her times, the Wexford books in particular often engaged with social or political issues close to her heart.

Rendell won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for 1976’s best crime novel with A Demon in My View, a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986, and the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

Ruth Rendell died in May 2015. Her final novel, Dark Corners, was published in October 2015.

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Praise for Ruth Rendell's Wexford novels

'Chief Inspector Wexford is Rendell's most enduring and best creation' Daily Telegraph

' Like Wexford, Rendell's vision of human behaviour is intensely moral and often uncompromising. In an age of victimhood, this is as bracing as it is courageous.' Sunday Times

'The Wexford books clearly display Rendell's great mastery of storytelling at its best' Sunday Telegraph

Praise for Portobello

'Ruth Rendell is marvellous at psychological tension... she knits all the threads together with a casual flourish that shows veteran expertise.' - Sunday Times

'An irresistibly readable, tragi-comic carnival' - Independent

'A thriller steeped in psychological intrigue' - Daily Mirror

'Captivating... Her deft sculpturing of characters' idiosyncratic obsessions and foibles betrays a shrewdness of perception of which even the absent Wexford would be proud.' - Time Out

'An absorbing story ... She portrays the Portobello area, a melting-pot to the poor and the posh, with harsh, realistic affection bordering on the elegiac' The Times

'Ruth Rendell's sense of place and disdain for her characters elevates a sordid case of arson into an artful exploration of sinister self-delusion.' - Books of the Year, Evening Standard

Aus dem Klappentext

'Wexford had never told anyone. The strange relationship, if it could be called that, had gone on for years, decades, and he had never breathed a word about it. He had kept silent because he knew no one would believe him. None of it could be proved, not the stalking, not the stares or the conspiratorial smiles, not the killings, not any of the signs Targo had made because he knew Wexford knew and could do nothing about it.'

Chief Inspector Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never again set eyes on Eric Targo's short, muscular figure. And yet there he was, back in Kingsmarkham, still with that cocky, strutting walk.

Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, a woman called Elsie Carroll had been found strangled in her bedroom. Although many had their suspicions that her husband was guilty, no one was convicted.

Another woman was strangled shortly afterwards, and every personal and professional instinct told Wexford that the killer was still at large. And it was Eric Targo. A psychopath who would kill again...

As the Chief Inspector investigates a new case, Ruth Rendell looks back to the beginning of Wexford's career, even to his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. The past is a haunted place, with clues and passions that leave an indelible imprint on the here and now.