A classic Rendellian loner, Mix Cellini is superstitious about the number 13. Living in a decaying house in Notting Hill, Mix is obsessed with 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed a series of foul murders. He is also infatuated with a beautiful model who lives nearby - a woman who would not look at him twice. Mix's landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer is equally reclusive - living her life through her library of books. Both landlady and lodger are caught up in their own psychologically twisted parallel worlds. But when reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes.
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
Title: Thirteen Steps Down
Author: Ruth Rendell
ISBN: 9780099580034
Binding:
Publisher: Cornerstone
Publication Date: 2012-08-02
Number of Pages: 400
Weight: 0.2858 kg
If Ruth Rendell were not slotted into the category of writer of mystery novels, she would have won the Booker long ago for the sly style that sidles up on the reader, full of cozening phrases that ensnare. * Books of the Year, Evening Standard *
There are the fears that haunt us, the nightmarish urban myths of our time... One of the most remarkable talents writing today. Ruth Rendell is a peer of the realm, and she deserves to be: she's a national treasure * Independent *
