Ruth Rendell
Life Ms Rendell is often called the Queen of Crime, a well-deserved title, as she has written over 40 novels and just as many stories about crime. She has received many awards, especially in the field of crime writing (such as the prestigious American Edgar award, which she won three times). Because of her successful career she was made a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 1996 and a life peer (a title awarded for life): she may now call herself Baroness Rendell (of Babergh, a town in Suffolk). Writing Critics have praised her (and her colleague P.D. James) for introducing the whydunit in English literature (as opposed to the whodunit): not the discovery of the crime is important, but the reason why the crime was committed is. This is probably why her novels have remained so popular through the years: Ms Rendell always wants to explain the characters of criminals, the reasons behind a crime. Often her criminals have led lonely lives, have been abused themselves, have been bullied, and so on. These often sad, desperate and solitary figures are capable of many kinds of crime, and Ruth Rendell knows how to keep the reader on edge as to when and how this crime will be solved, but she also makes the reader feel compassion for the criminal. Ruth Rendell’s career started with the detective stories starring Inspector Wexford, which was already a different kind of crime novel: whereas the millions of readers of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers had become used to complicated crimes involving strange ways of murdering a fellow human being, they were now confronted with ‘ordinary’ crimes committed by ordinary, but pitiful characters.
Ruth (Barbara) Rendell was born in London in 1930. She started her career as a journalist, but was fired when she had written an article about a local tennis club’s dinner which she should have but hadn’t attended (and about which she therefore had failed to report on a sudden death: the speaker’s, who had suddenly died while holding his speech).
Ms Rendell is a very successful author in a long English tradition of crime writers (such as Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, C.K. Chesterton, Nicci French), but especially in a long tradition of female crime writers: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Patricia Highsmith, and P.D. James, just to mention a few.
This practice (not just finding the criminal, but also finding the reason behind the crime) was further developed in Rendell’s psychological crime novels. Here she could describe any setting without being confined to the Wexford-scenery.
The third category of books she wrote were written under the pseudonym Barbara (her second name) Vine (her grandmother’s maiden name). In these novels she concentrated even more on such complicated themes as family secrets (the skeletons in the closet) and the effects of crime and deceit.
Ms Rendell has been praised for her elegant style of writing, yet carefully developed plots and or her insight in the human mind.
Works
Novels
So far Ms Rendell has written some 23 novels, not counting the ones she wrote under the pseudonym Barbara Vine (some 13), the Inspector Wexford-whodunits, the novellas and short stories (she wrote about 10 books of these in all).
Inspector Wexford Series
There are over 20 Wexford books, crime novels starring Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, set in Kingsmarkham, a fictional English town. Her first Wexford detective (actually her first published book) was published in 1964. Most of the stories were televised for British television and have become a worldwide success.
The Lake of Darkness is a psychological crime novel.