Once again, Ruth Rendell lures us into the dark corners of London and the dark corners of the mind. Narrator Ric Jerrom disappears into the seemingly ordinary characters featured in several expertly tangled story threads, allowing listeners to peer into their obsessions, compulsions, and psychopathy. Carl owns a house in the posh part of town. He rents the upstairs flat to Dermot, an intrusive, disturbing man. Carl sells some of his late father’s weight-loss pills to his overweight friend, Stacey. Stacey dies. Dermot knows Carl’s secret and blackmails him. Jerrom adds color to Nicola, Carl’s girlfriend; Stacey’s friend, Lizzie; Lizzie’s bus-riding dad; and two bungling kidnappers. As dark events intersect and spiral out of control, Jerrom keeps things splendidly sinister. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

Let us nowpraise Ruth Rendell — and mourn her, for herself and for her millions ofreaders. The prolific British writer died this year at age 85…she won widepraise for her dark tales of suspense mixed with significant psychologicalaspects. One of the past half century’s leading practitioners of the genre, shetranscended and expanded it. Now we have her final novel, DARK CORNERS — agripping story of blackmail and death… one cannot turn the pages ofthis trademark Rendell novel without feeling a rising chill and hearing thewhispered hiss of a snake. The author blends the mundane with the menacing,all the while infusing her story with edgy humor…DARK CORNERSprovides lovers of intimate and intelligent fiction with a final bequest from awriter who ranks among the best and whose body of work likely will be read andre-read for many years.

Ruth Rendell’s final novel, DARK CORNERS, is a deliciouslydiabolical tale on a favorite theme: one person’s devouring of a weakerperson’s identity…Carl may be sitting pretty, but he’s just the sort ofweak-willed milquetoast Rendell enjoys tearing into little bits.

"No one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, istability, and malignant coincidence."

With DARK CORNERS, Rendell, who perfected the art of the truly suspenseful, psychological thriller, clearly had one final trick of drawn-out intensity up her sleeve… Rendell’s delicious, quasi tongue-in-cheek atmosphere is so finely-tuned and tightly wound that it manages to be menacing and mesmerizing while harboring a nearly over-the-top element of the melodramatic.… The book inspires a perpetual niggling level of anxiety, the persistent white noise of tension and jittery energy that Rendell honed to bone-cutting sharpness over her long and celebrated career… Meanwhile, she incorporates tart, amusing, and canny observations on the current state of everything from the challenge of grown children moving in with parents — or, in some cases, never leaving — to the lack of affordable housing in London, the presence of random violence, Cones of Shame on pets. From the creepiness of a character who relishes causing fear in others, to the surprising ways in which a football-size pottery goose can come in handy, DARK CORNERS proves that Rendell never lost her touch."

"A worthy addition to the canon... Rendell once again exhumes the depths of obsession and traces each step in a sympathetic character's downward spiral. It has both a mythic element—all the trouble starts with a box that shouldn't have been opened—and a Victorian bent, in that it features an inheritance that dooms the recipient... This is stunningly suspenseful and often downright creepy."

I’m so sad that there will never be another new Ruth Rendell mystery to look forward to, but I’m so glad she had this last one in the pipeline… Her Inspector Wexford novels, her books under the name Barbara Vine, and these standalones full of uneasy menace will all be missed.

Ruth Rendell is my dream writer. Her prose style...has the disquieting intimacy of an alien touch in the dark.

"A spectacularly creepy and macabre tale from Rendell."

The late Ruth Rendell put a permanent stamp on crime fiction with 65 novels of screw-twisting suspense, written under both her own name and the pseudonym Barbara Vine. The posthumously published DARK CORNERS is a worthy final entry in her body of work.

Praise for Ruth Rendell

“If you’re unfamiliar with Ruth Rendell, if you’ve somehow managed to miss her sixty or so books … then, congratulations: Your reading life is about to get infinitely richer."

Rendell has for years, along with her friend P.D. James, been bringing new sophistication and psychological depth to the traditional English mystery.

DARK CORNERS, Ruth Rendell’s final mystery novel, ranks among her best… Including those she published as Barbara Vine, DARK CORNERS is Ruth Rendell’s 66th novel — and her last. Rendell, who was made a life peer as Baroness Rendell of Babergh in 1997, died in May of this year at the age of 85.Throughout her prolific output, she maintained high standards, winning three American Edgars and multiple British awards for best mystery novel. One of her Inspector Wexford novels, A Guilty Thing Surprised (1970), was long-listed for the Lost Man Booker Prize. As a longtime fan of Rendell’s, I naturally wanted to give DARK CORNERS a positive review, and luckily itdeserves one…Let me finish by saluting the late Baroness Rendell in the proper British fashion: Well done, my lady.

Unequivocally the most brilliant mystery writer of our time.

With her death last May at the age of 85, the contemporary English novel lost its finest and most stringent moralist. Not that there was anything prim or scolding in Rendell’s work. As a writer, she possessed a piercing knowledge of how the minor sins of pettiness, vanity, and hypocrisy often slide effortlessly into the commission of larger sins… In Rendell’s books, life is both sinister and ordinary…her recognition of the thin, wavering line between the evil and the quotidian may explain the ease with which she stepped into the criminal mind… Rendell’s work… displays a growing acuity of psychological perception and authority to her moral vision…the weight of her achievement lies less in individual volumes than in the body of her work, just as the pleasure of reading it comes from encountering that deepening sensibility in book after book…Rarely does a novelist express an ever-deepening but consistent psychological and moral vision over so many years. Rarely does a vision that could feel so grim in what it apprehended seem such a sign of the persistence of hard-headed decency.

An undisputed master of crime fiction, Ruth Rendell's posthumously published last book is a calculated, slow burn…Only Rendell can show us how chillingly easy it is for ordinary people to slide into criminal behavior.

"Ruth Rendell was one of the finest writers of the 20th century."

Rendell has for years, along with her friend P.D. James, been bringing new sophistication and psychological depth to the traditional English mystery.

Once again, Ruth Rendell lures us into the dark corners of London and the dark corners of the mind. Narrator Ric Jerrom disappears into the seemingly ordinary characters featured in several expertly tangled story threads, allowing listeners to peer into their obsessions, compulsions, and psychopathy. Carl owns a house in the posh part of town. He rents the upstairs flat to Dermot, an intrusive, disturbing man. Carl sells some of his late father’s weight-loss pills to his overweight friend, Stacey. Stacey dies. Dermot knows Carl’s secret and blackmails him. Jerrom adds color to Nicola, Carl’s girlfriend; Stacey’s friend, Lizzie; Lizzie’s bus-riding dad; and two bungling kidnappers. As dark events intersect and spiral out of control, Jerrom keeps things splendidly sinister. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine