Ruth Rendell

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But only for a while ... One particular member of the local press is gunning for the Chief Inspector, distinctly unimpressed with what he regards as old-fashioned police methods. But Wexford, with his old friend and partner, Mike Burden, along with two new recruits to the Kingsmarkham team, pursue...

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 reveal the precise cause of death. The only clue is a crack in one of the dead man's ribs. Although the police database covers a relatively short period of time, it stores a long list of Missing Persons....

A handsome young craftsman falls in love with a sweet, upper-class girl in Britain. The girl's stepmother opposes the romance because of his low-class origin so he murders her. Not his first murder, either. By the author of Road Rage.

This Edgar Award finalist from the New York Times–bestselling author is a “suspense mystery of the highest order” (The New Yorker).
 
For London’s Chief Inspector Reg Wexford, it wasn’t an official call. He was just being neighborly when he agreed to talk to Joy Williams about her missing husband, Rodney. Apparently, he went to Ipswich on business and never came home. Wexford has...

A wallet found in Comfrey's handbag leads Inspector Wexford to Mr. Grenville West, a writer whose plots revel in the blood, thunder, and passion of dramas of old; whose current whereabouts are unclear; and whose curious secretary--the plain Polly Flinders--provides the Inspector with more questions than answers. And when a second Grenville West comes to light, Wexford faces a dizzying array of possible scenarios--and suspects--behind the Comfrey murder....

This book, the twenty-second book in the Inspector Wexford series, takes Inspector Wexford back to his days as a young policeman, and to the man he has long suspected of murder -- serial murder. Outside the house where Wexford investigated his first murder case -- a woman found strangled in her bedroom -- he noticed a short, muscular man wearing a scarf and walking a dog. He gave Wexford an unnerving stare. Without any solid evidence, Wexford began...

From the New York Times–bestselling author of A Dark-Adapted Eye: A unique psychological thriller about a gentle young man tempted to kill for love.
 
Philip Wardman is disgusted by murder. He cannot tolerate violent films or the local news, and when his friends discuss such things he often leaves the room. At his sister’s wedding, Philip becomes infatuated with a strange, silver-haired woman named...

A lonely man stumbles into a dangerous game in this twisting novel of psychological suspense by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Crocodile Bird.
 
In a desolate alley on the bank of the Thames, a spy slips through the shadows. Mungo is the Director General of English intelligence, and he knows Moscow Centre has been watching him for weeks, but there is no spy in London better at losing a tail....

Weaves together the ultimately deadly stories of Pup Yearman, who sold his soul to the devil, his unhappy older sister, and butcher-knife keeper Diarmit Bawne.

With an indefinable edge to it that adds a spice of danger, there is nothing safe about the Portobello area of West London. On a shopping trip one day, Eugene, quite by chance, comes across an envelope containing money, but for some reason, rather than report the matter to the police, he writes a note which ends up linking the lives of a number of very different people.