Ruth Rendell

Author Information
Ruth Rendell's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    78 Books (1 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1964
  • Latest Book:
    October 2021
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About the Author

Ruth Rendell // Barbara Vine

Ruth Rendell, a prolific and hugely popular writer of intricately plotted mystery novels that combined psychological insight, social conscience and, not infrequently, teeth-chattering terror, died on Saturday, May 2, 2015 in London. She was 85.

Her death was announced by her publisher, Penguin Random House, according to British news media. A cause was not given, but Ms. Rendell had been hospitalized since having a stroke in January.

Full Series List in Order

An Inspector Wexford Mystery

1 - From Doon With Death (1964)
2 - Wolf to the Slaughter (1967)
3 - A New Lease of Death // Sins of the Fathers (1967)
4 - The Best Man to Die (1969)
5 - A Guilty Thing Surprised (1970)
6 - No More Dying Then (1971)
7 - Murder Being Once Done (1972)
8 - Some Lie and Some Die (1973)
9 - Shake Hands Forever (1975)
10 - A Sleeping Life (1978)
11 - Death Notes // Put On By Cunning (1981)
12 - The Speaker of Mandarin (Aug-1984)
13 - An Unkindness of Ravens (Sep-1985)
14 - The Veiled One (Aug-1988)
15 - Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (Jun-1992)
16 - Simisola (Sep-1995)
17 - Road Rage (Aug-1997)
18 - Harm Done (Oct-1999)
19 - The Babes in the Wood (Oct-2003)
20 - End in Tears (Oct-2005)
21 - Not in the Flesh (Nov-2007)
22 - The Monster in the Box (Oct-2009)
23 - The Vault (Sep-2011)
24 - No Man's Nightingale (Nov-2013)
When the Wedding Was over (Jan-1997)

Book List in Order: 78 titles

  • From Doon With Death

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 1

    Margaret Parsons isn't the type to surprise anyone, especially not her husband. So when he finds the house empty one evening, he panics. She's always been there when he gets home -- puttering in the garden or standing at the stove fixing him a chop...

  • To Fear a Painted Devil

    THERE WAS NO PROOF A CRIME HAD BEEN COMMITTED BUT EVERYONE WAS A SUSPECT No one liked Patrick Selby. If his death hadn't been so peculiar, no one would have questioned it. But even Dr. Greenleaf who signed the death certificate began to suspect fo...

  • Vanity Dies Hard

    Wealthy Alice Whittaker -- now Alice Fielding -- is known for her generosity, and when her friend Nesta vanishes Alice is determined to find her and help her. If that means money, well, Alice has plenty of it.

    Then Alice starts to feel sick --...

  • A New Lease of Death // Sins of the Fathers

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 3

    It was a brutal, vicious crime -- sixteen years old. A helpless old woman battered to death with an axe. Harry Painter hung for it, and Chief Inspector Wexford is certain they executed the right man. But Reverend Archery has doubts . . . because his ...

  • Wolf to the Slaughter

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 2

    Chief Inspector Wexford's canny yet compassionate crime-solving has endeared him to readers around the world, earning his creator, Ruth Rendell, the highest praise. In Wolf to the Slaughter-, this much is clear: Anita Margolis is missing. The free-l...

  • The Best Man to Die

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 4

    The stag party was terrific. The incident that followed was terrifying. . . .“The best mystery writer anywere in the English-speaking world.” -- The Boston GlobeWho could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be a prelud...

  • A Guilty Thing Surprised

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 5

    EVERYONE LOVED ELIZABETH --including one man who had no right to. For it was clear that the glamorous mistress of Myfleet Manor had slipped away from her husband to meet a secret lover-and had met her death instead. Was her lover the killer? Or w...

  • No More Dying Then

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 6

    What kind of a person would kidnap two children?That is the question that haunts Wexford when a five-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl disappear from the village of Kingsmarkham. When a child's body turns up at an abandoned country home one sea...

  • Murder Being Once Done

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 7

    On a stormy February afternoon, little Stella Rivers disappears and is never seen again. Then, on a warm October day, five-year-old John Lawrence fails to come home, and evil, mad, taunting letters begin, which make the worst, unspoken imaginings a b...



  • Some Lie and Some Die

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 8

    A mutilated body found at a rock festival.In spite of dire predictions, the rock festival in Kingsmarkham seemed to be going off without a hitch, until the hideously disfigured body is discovered in a nearby quarry. And soon Wexford is investigating ...

  • Venus's-Flytrap

    in Garden of Deadly Delights

    A DAZZLING BOUQUET OF MYSTERY AND MURDER Here, amid the lush, heady beauty of a garden setting, everything's coming up roses...or turning up corpses. Focusing on crime that flourishes amid the flora, this blooming collection of 19 tales provides m...

  • 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,...

  • One Across, Two Down

    There are only two things in life that interest Stanley: solving crossword puzzles, and getting his hands on his mother-in-law's money. For twenty years, nearly all his adult life, the puzzles have been his only pleasure; his mother-in-law's ...

  • Shake Hands Forever

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 9

    The bed was neatly made, and the woman on top neatly strangled.According to all accounts, Angela Hathall was deeply in love with her husband and far too paranoid to invite an unknown person into their home. So who managed to gain entry and strangle h...

  • A Demon in My View

    JUST AN ORDINARY MAN Arthur Johnson. A small, neat, quiet creature of regular habits. Yet Arthur had strange secrets. He found delicious pleasure in venting his rage on his "white lady," the plastic mannequin in the cellar. And, he "murdered" aga...

  • A Sleeping Life

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 10

    Rhoda Comfrey's death seemed unremarkable; the real mystery was her life.In A Sleeping Life, master mystery writer Ruth Rendell unveils an elaborate web of lies and deception painstakingly maintained by a troubled soul. A wallet found in Comfrey's ha...

  • A Judgement in Stone

    A crime novel in which four members of one family are shot dead one Valentine's Day by their housekeeper, who is arrested for the crime two weeks later, but the tragedy neither begins nor ends there. From the author of THE REASON WHY, SIMISOLA and TH...

  • Make Death Love Me

    The potent and murky impulses of desire, greed, obsession and fear combine with deadly results in this compelling psychological thriller from multi-million copy and SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Ruth Rendell. Perfect for readers of PD James, Ann C...

  • 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...



  • Death Notes // Put On By Cunning

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy
    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 11

    Sir Manuel Camargue, yesterday one of the most celebrated musicians of his time, today floats face down in the lake near his sprawling English country house. The consensus is accidental death -- but Inspector Wexford knows the stench of murder most f...

  • The Fallen Curtain

       A stranger lures a child into his car with the promise of sweets. A young man spots his   fiancée’s double in a public park of ill repute. An executive visits the secluded home of a former employee whose intentions are ...

  • Master of the Moor

    Stephen Whalby loves to walk the moor. He considers it his, although he and his young wife Lyn are merely tenants in a flat nearby. But the senseless and frightening murder of a young woman invades Stephen's sense of privacy and pollutes his beloved ...

  • Fever Tree and Other Stories of Suspense

  • The Killing Doll

    In a shabby London suburb, sixteen-year-old Pup Yearman dabbles in magic. But for Pup's older sister Dolly, the magic is more than dabbling. Deformed by a facial birthmark, Dolly desperately wants to be cured, and her obsession with Pup's magic sends...

  • The Speaker of Mandarin

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 12

    “The heiress apparent to Agatha Christie.” -- Los Angeles TimesChief Inspector Wexford is in China, visiting ancient tombs and palaces with a group of British tourists. Is he hallucinating, or does a bent old woman with bound feet follow him ever...

  • The Tree of Hands

    A daughter's grief . . . A mother's madness . . . And a daring act of love that defied every law . . . 

    “The best mystery writer anywhere in the English-speaking world.” -- The Boston Globe

    Mopsa, driven by a past scarred by madnes...

  • An Unkindness of Ravens

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 13

    Rodney Williams's disappearance seems typical to Chief Inspector Wexford -- a simple case of a man running off with a woman other than his wife. But when another woman reports that her husband is missing, the case turns unpleasantly complex. A...

  • The New Girl Friend and Other Stories of Suspense

    In her deft dramatization of the way ordinary lives can take the most extraordinary and eventful twists, Ruth Rendell has proved herself again and again one of our most accomplished and literate suspense writers. These eleven short and shocking tale...

  • Live Flesh

    After ten years in prison for shooting -- and permanently crippling -- a young policeman, Victor Jenner is released to a strange new world and told to make a new life for himself. It's hard to fill the days, but at least there's one blessing -- he wa...



  • 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. ...

  • 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 and moles are schoolboys engaged in harmless play. John Creevey doesn't know this. To him, the messages he p...

  • 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 d...

  • The Veiled One

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 14

    Who would garrote a middle-aged housewife and leave her body in the parking garage of a suburban shopping mall? Chief Inspector Wexford is no sooner on the case than off it -- a car bomb's explosion lands him in the hospital. It's now up to Mike B...

  • The Bridesmaid

    Philip Wardman, a young man with an abnormal fear of violence and death, meets beautiful and mysterious Senta, a bridesmaid in his sister's wedding, who insists that he prove his love to her by committing a murder...

  • Collected Stories

  • Going Wrong

    TILL DEATH DO US JOIN...Ever since they ran with the same London teenage gang Guy Curran has loved Leonora Chisholm passionately. He was a slum kid, and her parents lived in tasteful Kensington; she went to university while he made his jet-set fortun...

  • Inspector Wexford on Holiday

  • The Copper Peacock and Other Stories

    The Copper Peacock and Other Stories gathers together nine new short stories - eight tales featuring the psychological suspense that has made Ruth Rendell the darling of critics and discerning fans, and one classic detective story featuring Chief Ins...

  • Means of Evil & Other Stories

    Five short mystery stories featuring Detective Chief Inspector Wexford involve challenging cases ranging from a suspicious suicide and a strange incident of child abduction to a bizarre murder in Yugoslavia...



  • Mystery Cats

    Mystery Cats: Felonious Felines from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine A collection of stories by fourteen modern mystery writers--including Ruth Rendell, Patricia Moyes, Patricia Highsmith, and Lilian...

  • Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 15

    The blood hod turned the white damask tablecloth a terrible bright red. Later the newspapers would call the triple murder in the magnificent Kingsmarkham country home the "Tancred House massacre." When Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford arrived at the ...

  • The Crocodile Bird

    A mother and daughter live quietly in the rustic gatehouse of Shrove House, an isolated British estate. Their life seems perfectly ordinary except that daughter Liza has been kept isolated from the outside world all of her sixteen years. And that s...

  • Murder for Mother

    An anthology of original mysteries in which mothers of all kinds play every conceivable role, from sleuth to victim, celebrates Mother's Day in a collection featuring works by Ruth Rendell, Bill Crider, Barbara Collins, and other notable mystery writ...

  • Simisola

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 16

    THE LADY VANISHES No one admitted to spotting the doctor's missing daughter--even after the murders began. Melanie Akande, eschewing privilege, had insisted on going to the jobsearch office to find employment. But between that office and the bus sto...

  • The Reason Why

    One of the world's most acclaimed mystery writers presents an anthology of literary depictions of murder that delves into the human passions, terrors, and foibles that incite the act and linger in its wake. Includes such writers as Sophocles, Shakesp...

  • Blood Lines

    Hailed by Patricia Cornwell as "unequivocally the most brilliant mystery writer of our time, " Ruth Rendell now delivers an all-new collection of long- and short-story mysteries. As always with Rendell, these stories of mystery and wrongdoing shine t...

  • The Astronomical Scarf

    in Women On the Case

    Crime and detection are women's work for twenty-six great writers in this second brilliant collection of mystery fiction edited by Sara Paretsky. From wicked irony and white-collar crime in Amanda Cross's "The Baroness," to the chilling "Only a Woman...

  • The Keys to the Street

    MISSING PERSONS Each of the murdered men was found impaled on the spiked fence around Regent's Park. Except for one, all were street people - like Pharoah the Key Man - whose real identities had vanished with their descent into the city's undersi...

  • A Needle For The Devil

    in 3rd Culprit (Worldwide)

    Crime in all its devious incarnations is presented in this treat of murderous morsels dished out by old ppros and promising newcomers. Artfully crafted and impossible to put down, each story bountifully demooonstrates why these authors are la creme d...



  • When the Wedding Was over

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery

    Ever since its creation, the Crime Writers’ Association has championed the very best in murder and mystery. Now, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of this esteemed organization, Mysterious Pleasures showcases the short stories of some of its most...

  • Road Rage

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 17

    The woods outside of Kingsmarkham were lovely, dark, and deep. And they were about to vanish forever when the new highway cut through them. While Chief Inspector Wexford privately despaired about the loss of his hiking grounds, local residents and ou...

  • Whydunit?

  • The Fall of the Coin

  • The Case of the Achilles Heel

  • Inspector Wexford Investigates

  • A Sight for Sore Eyes

    Teddy was born in squalor. Now he is a craftsman determined to banish ugliness from his life. Harriet is a beautiful, bored trophy wife who employs a series of repairmen for her sexual satisfaction. And Francine is a college student who witnessed her...

  • Harm Done

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 18

    The search for the body commenced. Then the victim walked into town.Behind the picture-postcard façade of Kingsmarkham lies a community rife with violence, betrayal, and a taste for vengeance. When sixteen-year-old Lizzie Cromwell reappears no one k...

  • Thornapple

    Stories in the Travelman Short Stories series take the reader to places of mystery, fantasy, horror, romance, and corners of the universe yet unexplored. In turn, readers take them on the bus or subway, slip them into briefcases and lunchboxes, and s...

  • Piranha to Scurfy: And Other Stories

    Nine deliciously frightening and exquisitely crafted tales of psychological terror from Ruth Rendell.A self-appointed critic reads books only to catch out their errors of fact and usage, which he points out to their authors in vicious letters: Then o...

  • Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

    Minty’s boyfriend, Jock, was killed in the disastrous train wreck at Paddington, shortly after he borrowed all her savings. Now he has come back to haunt her. Zillah lost her estranged husband, Jerry, in that same accident. She is not convinced he ...

  • The Babes in the Wood

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 19

    With floods threatening both the town of Kingsmarkham and his own home and no end to the rain in sight, Chief Inspector Wexford already has his hands full when he learns that two local teenagers have gone missing along with their sitter, Joanna Troy....

  • The Rottweiler

    The first victim had bite marks on her neck so the London papers nicknamed her killer, “the Rottweiler.” He has been stalking the small and diverse London community of Lisson Grove, where Inez Ferry runs an antique shop frequented by a motley co...

  • The Irony Of Hate

    in A Moment on the Edge

    "

    “An absolutely first-rate anthology. . . a thoughtful and intelligent paean to crime fiction.” — New York Sun

    #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George serves up a century''s worth of superb crim...

  • Thirteen Steps Down

    Mix Cellini has just moved into a flat in a decaying house in Nottinghill, where he plans to pursue his two abiding passions--supermodel Nerissa Nash, whom he worships from afar, and the life of serial killer Reggie Christie, hanged fifty years earli...

  • End in Tears

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 20

    In End in Tears, Edgar Award winning author Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford has his work cut out for him: When Mavis Ambrose is killed by a falling chunk of concrete, the police have no reason to suspect mischief. However, the bludgeoning of the y...

  • The Thief

    From the author of End in Tears comes a chilling thriller for “Quick Reads” -- books for emergent readers, published as part of the UK’s World Book Day Adult Literacy Initiative 2006.

    What you do in childhood may come back to haunt you...

  • The Water's Lovely

    Weeks went by when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring it back or it would return in a dream. The dream always began in the same way. She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following Heather's lead through the be...

  • Not in the Flesh

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 21

    Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury -- a human hand. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped in a purple cotton shroud. The post mortem cannot...

  • Portobello

    From crime fiction's reigning queen comes a diabolically intricate tale that weaves together the lives of very different people in the vibrant part of London known as Portobello. Fifty-year-old Eugene Wren inherited from his father an art gallery ...

  • The Monster in the Box

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 22

    The Monster in the Box is the latest addition to Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford series. In this enthralling new book, Rendell, takes Inspector Wexford back to his first murder case -- a woman found strangled in her bedroom. Outside the crime scen...

  • Tigerlily's Orchids

    When Stuart Font decides to throw a house-warming party in his new flat he invites everyone in his building. The party will be one everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons.... Living opposite, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful...

  • The Vault

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 23

    In the stunning climax to Rendell's classic A Sight for Sore Eyes, three bodies -- two dead, one living -- are entombed in an underground chamber beneath a picturesque London house. Twelve years later, when a manhole cover is pulled back, the house's...

  • The St. Zita Society

    From three-time Edgar Award-winning mystery writer Ruth Rendell comes a captivating and expertly plotted tale of residents and servants on one block of a posh London street -- and the deadly ways their lives intertwine. Life for the residents and ...

  • No Man's Nightingale

    An Inspector Wexford Mystery - 24

    From crime legend Ruth Rendell, the gripping new novel in her beloved (USA Today) Inspector Wexford series, which will soon mark its fiftieth anniversary A female vicar named Sarah Hussain is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham vicarage. Max...

  • The Girl Next Door

    From crime legend Ruth Rendell, a psychologically intriguing novel about an old murder that sends shockwaves across a group of astonishingly carnal and appetiteful elderly friends: “Refined, probing, and intelligent…never less than a pleasure” ...

  • Dark Corners

    A spectacularly compelling story of blackmail, murders both accidental and opportunistic, and of one life’s fateful unraveling from Ruth Rendell -- “one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation” (People) -- writing at her most acute a...

  • A Spot of Folly

    A spine-tingling anthology by the New York Times-bestselling author. These never-before-collected stories by Ruth Rendell -- the three-time Edgar Award-winning mistress of dark suspense and one of the most celebrated thriller writers of the twent...

  • The Vinegar Mother

    In this short story from Ruth Rendell’s The Fallen Curtain, an eleven year old girl joins a classmate and her family for a summer in the countryside. But what should be a dream vacation becomes something closer to a nightmare, when a neighbor deliv...

Award-Winning Books by Ruth Rendell

The Fallen Curtain
1975 Edgar Allan Poe Award -- Short Story


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Ruth Rendell has published 78 books.

Ruth Rendell does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Vinegar Mother, was published in October 2021.

The first book by Ruth Rendell, From Doon With Death, was published in January 1964.

Yes. Ruth Rendell has 1 series.
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