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Ruth Rendell wrote her first novel From Doon with Death in 1964, which introduced her enduring and popular detective, Inspector Reginald Wexford. Since then, she has gone on to write sixty bestselling novels, including police procedurals, some of which have been successfully adapted for TV, standalone psychological mysteries, and a third strand of crime novels under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. Her awards include the Gold, Silver and Cartier Diamond Dagger Awards from the Crime Writers Association, three Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America, an Arts Council National Book Award, and the Sunday Times Literary Award. A regular Sunday Times bestseller, she recently celebrated fifty years of writing Inspector Wexford novels.
Nobody does the suburbs like Ruth Rendell: in her expert hands they exert a morbid fascination. Behind the immaculate exteriors lurks a world of unhappiness and deceit - and at times murder. An excellent read. * The Lady * In this engaging novel, the portraits of elderly people living today and their preoccupations are presented with almost sociological precision, and scattered throughout are acute observations about changing language and manners. * Literary Review * An excellent analysis of re-found youth, this novel shows how people can surprise themselves even in their winter years. * Sunday Express * That The Girl Next Door works as a standalone novel is partly attributable to Rendell's deftness in parrying comparisons with her best-known creation. It also unravels a satisfying mystery, stretching tentacles into the past. * Spectator * Rendell gives an acutely observed portrayal of old age through her characters' regrets, losses and bewilderment . . . Difficult themes such as death, usually dressed up in mystery in a crime novel are, thanks to these elderly protagonists, real, hard-hitting and constant. * Observer * This book is extraordinarily courageous, a demonstration that fiction can take us where reportage dares not go. * Independent * Fifty years on, the girl from Essex has become the unchallenged crime queen of suburbia. Her powers of observation are as acute as ever, and she writes about old age with as much gusto as any of the subjects she has tackled in her long career. * Sunday Times * She is the peer of Kingsley Amis and Muriel Spark. The Girl Next Door is as great a novel as Stanley and the Women or Memento Mori . . . a joy to read. Rendell's novels establish a sense of order that is deeply satisfying. * Evening Standard * Rendell is as masterful as ever; her writing tense, brittle, and brilliant. * Sunday Mirror * The Girl Next Door is vintage Rendell and a perfect celebration of her half-century. She's so effortlessly prolific that it's easy to take her for granted; we assume that if we miss one of her books, there'll be another one along in a minute. This novel, however, reminded me of the singularity of Ruth Rendell's talent, her effortless mastery of language and her uncanny genius for mapping a criminal mind. * The Times *
