Simisola: (A Wexford Case) - Softcover

There are only eighteen black people living in Kingsmarkham. One is Wexford's new doctor, Raymond Akande, who took over the retiring Dr. Crocker's practice. When the doctor's daughter. Melanie, goes missing, the Chief Inspector takes more than just a professional interest in the case. Melanie had only just left university, and, unable to find a job, had been to sign on social security. She disappeared somewhere between the Benefit Office and the bus stop. Or at least no one saw her get on the bus when it came. According to her parents, Melanie was happy at home. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend, but, until now, there had been no cause to worry about her. And no one liked to voice the suspicion that something dreadful might have happened, that Melanie might be dead. . . . Against a background of rising unemployment and social change. Wexford is involved in a case which tests not only his powers of deduction, but his basic beliefs and prejudices.

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, is scheduled for publication in October 2015