Barbara Vine

Categories

Classic Whodunit,
Psychological

Links

Kings and Queens of Crime - Essays on major Crime Writers - Val McDermid on Ruth Rendell

BARBARA VINE
(psuedonym of Ruth Rendell)

A Dark-Adapted Eye

The award-winning author and acclaimed mistress of suspense delves deeply into the heart of a family to uncover the circumstances that lead to murder more than thirty years ago. The story of a family's long-buried secret past is revealed - and the deadly consequences.

A Fatal Inversion

In the long hot summer of 1976, a group of young people is camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there, what they are doing or how they are to live: they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. In short, they exist. ten years later, the bodies of a woman and a child are discovered in the Hall's animal cemetery. Which woman? Whose child?

The House of Stairs

As Elizabeth tells her story, so the tragic events that took place at the House of Stairs 20 years before are revealed. She tracks Bell Sanger down and renews her acquaintance, with terrifying results.

Gallowglass

"The Prince," said Sandor to Little Joe, "was an old man when our story begins". "Sandor is good, even excellent, at story-telling. Sandor is wonderful, too; dark, thick short hair, with marvelous hands, long and thin, like a woman's - a great smile. Once you've seen Sandor, no one else will do". Little Joe - loving, eager to please and learn - is ready to listen. The power of the educated over the simple is horribly clear in this disturbing and unusual relationship. As Sandor's motivation - both for rescuing Little Joe and then for weaving his spell of words - becomes clear, the darkness surrounding him is too much for them both and for the beautiful ex-model sequestered in her Suffolk mansion by an obsessive husband.

King Soloman's Carpet

Living in a school-turned-boarding house, Jarvis encounters a cast of bizarre characters - including hawk trainer Jed, Jasper and the truant boys, and Alice, who has abandoned her baby.

Asta's Book

It is 1905, Asta and Ramus have come to Hackney from Denmark with their two little boys. While Ramus travels abroad on business, Asta keeps her loneliness and isolation at bay by writing her diary in this strange house in a strange land. These diaries, published over seventy years later, will, uncover the truth of an unsolved crime and much else besides. As Asta's granddaughter reads the diaries they reveal to her the unknown facets of the woman she thought she knew. Passing reference is made to a Mrs. Roper, who lived near Asta in east London. Coincidentally, a documentary film is underway about an unsolved murder from the turn of the century - that of Lizzie Roper - and the subsequent disappearance of her daughter. Will this fragmentary evidence throw light on one of the century's most notorious trials and even solve another puzzle: who was Asta's daughter Swanny and what was the mystery of her background?

No Night is Too Long

Tim Cornish thought he'd gotten away with murder. For months after he'd killed his lover off the Alaskan coast, there hadn't been a word about the murder. But then the letters started to arrive, giving intimate details of the murder. It seems that someone knows what Tim has done.

The Brimstone Wedding

Unlike the other residents of Middleton Hall, Stella is smart and elegant and in control. She keeps her secrets to herself, revealing nothing of her past. Only Jenny, her young care assistant, seems aware that her heart harbors a dark, painful mystery. And only she can prevent Stella from carrying it to the grave. As the women talk, Jenny slowly pieces together the answers to many questions that arise. Why does Stella seem so afraid of driving? Why has she kept possession of a house that not even her children know about? What happened there that holds the key to a distant tragedy? As Jenny uses the house to meet her lover, she discovers untouched items - a painting, a burnt dress, a decaying car. But only when Stella leaves Jenny her tape recorder, into which she has recounted the true events of the past, can the truth be finally - and shockingly - revealed.

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

When successful author Gerald Candless dies of a sudden heart attack, his eldest daughter Sarah embarks on a memoir of him and soon begins to unearth a dark secret … At some point in his life her father had taken on a completely different identity ... in fact he wasn't Gerald Candless at all. But then who was he! And what had driven him to conceal his real identity?

Grasshopper

In a semi-fictionalized North London, a group of twenty-something slackers spend their nights walking the roofs of Maida Vale. On one of these walks they see a couple through an open window, a sighting with profound consequences that reverberate through all their lives.

The Blood Doctor

Lord Nanther embarks on a biography of his great-grandfather, the first Lord Nanther, physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria and an expert on blood diseases. What he uncovers begins to horrify him as he realizes that Nanther died a guilty man - carrying a horrific secret to the grave.

Barbara Vine: Three novels

Includes the first three novels of the list.