Harm Done: a hugely absorbing and compelling Wexford mystery from the award-winning queen of crime, Ruth Rendell

Description

The eighteenth 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. Readers of PD James, Ann Cleeves and Donna Leon will love this deliciously tense and suspenseful thriller from multi-million copy and SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Ruth Rendell. An absolute page-turner you won't be able to stop reading... 'The Wexford books clearly display Rendell's great mastery of storytelling at its best' -- Sunday Telegraph 'Rendell's detective fiction stands almost alone as a chronicle of the dark side of modern life...' -- Independent 'Unputdownable' -- ***** Reader review 'Another cracker from Rendell!' -- ***** Reader review 'A masterpiece' -- ***** Reader review 'When does Ruth Rendell ever write anything other than excellent?' -- ***** Reader review 'Thought provoking and absorbing' -- ***** Reader review ********************************************************************** A young girl disappears, then another. A notorious paedophile is released back into the community. The residents of the Muriel Campden Estate are up in arms, and even prepared to take the law into their own hands... As a policeman, Chief Inspector Wexford is faced with the effects of violence and prejudice every day. His daughter, Sylvia, has come to work nearby in a refuge for battered women. Her marriage is not a happy one, although her husband has never raised a hand to her. They are merely incompatible. Other women in Kingsmarkham are not so lucky... Wexford is soon called upon to investigate two extremely serious crimes which will affect the lives and attitudes of police and innocent villagers alike...

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

No contemporary writer of suspense stories tries to vary the form's boundaries more than Ruth Rendell * Guardian * The Wexford books clearly display Rendell's great mastery of storytelling at its best * Sunday Telegraph * It is hard to think of another crime writer who so effortlessly incorporates real events [...] into genre fiction, and in a serious manner... Rendell's detective fiction stands almost alone as a chronicle of the dark side of modern life... Rendell offers sufficient clues and red herrings to satisfy the msot dedicated puzzle-solver... Harm Done is a vivid demonstration of Rendell's contribution to contemporary fiction * Independent * One of the greatest novelists presently at work in our language... a writer whose work should be read by anyone who either enjoys a brilliant mystery - or distinguished literature * Scott Turow * More lifelike than many sophisticated thrillers * Sunday Times *