The Ruth Rendell Mysteries

A girl's badly decomposed body is found, and cabdriver Stanley Trotter is suspected of murder.

A Kingsmarkham bypass is planned which will take congestion and air pollution out of the town but put tarmac and heavy traffic through a stretch of much-loved countryside. Feelings are running high on both sides. An attractive young German tourist has disappeared, and when her decomposing body is found it is not clear whether the crime is part of a conspiracy or sex-related. Wexford is about to become a grandfather and is struggling to cope with family life and to do his job at the same time. Meanwhile, Dora Wexford has joined the anti-bypass campaign. The murder case continues, and the anti-bypass campaign escalates. People begin to be kidnapped, and this is linked to a militant group of environmental extremists. Under pressure on all fronts, Wexford keeps his cool (even when his wife is kidnapped on the day his daughter gives birth) and pursues the law-breakers to the bitter end.

Part three of three. After losing the fight with William, Guy decides to forget Leonora and make it up to Celeste, but a surprise invitation rekindles his old obsession and leads to tragedy.

Part two. While attending a party with Celeste, Guy argues with Leonora's brother. He then asks Danny to kill him - but when he learns of an impending marriage, Guy realises he has targeted the wrong man.

As a teenager, Guy Curran leads a street gang and for three years is the lover of Leonora, whose middle-class background is a world away from his own. Leonora's family disapprove of her boyfriend. As the years pass, they drift apart. Guy becomes a successful business man and Leonora goes to college and then gets her first job. When they meet again, Leonora says there is now someone else in her life, but Guy can't accept this. His obsession deepens and turns into a murderous madness...

Part two of two. Nick's attempted suicide implicates him in Emma's death and Annabel casts light on the mystery.

Nicholas Hawthorne is a young engineer, recently made redundant and looking for a job in the boat-building industry. He has a very realistic nightmare about a woman being murdered. Then, on an unsuccessful dinner date, Nicholas spots Julian Sorensen, the boss of the firm which has laid him off, and the woman with him isn't his wife. Sorensen pays Nicholas's dinner bill. The next day, trying to pay back the money, Nicholas sees a photograph of Sorensen's wife - and she is the woman who was killed in his dream... Nicholas decides to investigate.

Lisa meets Zoe, who is as much like her as an identical twin, but entirely out of the common rut - and dramatic events ensue which change both their lives.

Wexford visits the victim of another attempted murder in hospital, and notices a pink Volkswagen Beetle in the car park. Later, another attempt is made on her life. The car is traced to the Epson family, who are away, having left their children with a childminder - who turns out to be Melanie Akande. Wexford closes in on the link - Annette Bystock and Zack Nelson.

At first, this mystery seems to be a missing person case: Wexford's doctor asks for help in finding his daughter, Melanie Akande, a recent college graduate who disappeared after going to her local unemployment office to find a job. The Akandes are an immigrant family from Nigeria, living in a rural area where only a handful of black people live. The woman who handled Melanie's case at the unemployment office, also young and black, is found murdered a few days later. Could the disappearance and the murder be connected? Wexford begins to face up to subtly racist attitudes.

A middle-aged man returns to his home town and meets the woman he was in love with as a teenager thirty years before. Liz and Mark are soon an item again - but the past comes back to haunt them.

Andrew Fielding, a good-looking young teacher, marries Alice Whittaker, a rich woman in her late thirties, more than ten years older than he is. All seems well until Alice introduces Andrew to Nesta Drage, her best friend, who quickly vanishes without trace. Meanwhile, Alice more and more doubts whether Andrew loves her - and if he is just a gold-digger, might he have something to do with Nesta's disappearance? Alice begins a search for Nesta - but Andrew does his best to tie his wife to the house.

Wexford investigates the killing of an elderly woman. Harry and Doreen Betts of Kingsmarkham are suspected of murdering their mother. But did they do it, or have they been framed?

Tom Peterlee, a member of a large family who live in three adjoining cottages, is murdered. Eva, his mother is quite cavalier in reaction to his death in Wexford's opinion and other family members are no more helpful. Heather, his widow, seems dumb with grief and his brother and meek sister-in-law are similarly evasive. Family friend Carol is more forthcoming, providing Heather with an alibi, but Wexford is sure one of the Peterlees is a killer. Burden has problems of his own when his daughter starts dating a married man and a series of ramraids in Kingsmarkham add to Wexford's problems.

Wexford is in China on a study tour of historic sites. To his amazement, he has psychic experiences, including a vision of the body of a Chinese nobleman dead for two thousand years. Wexford's tour party is made up of strangers, but he feels tense and claustrophobic among them. Then a young Chinese student drowns during the trip. On his return to England, Wexford is called to a murder scene, and the dead woman, who has been shot, was one of those with him on his Chinese trip. There is no obvious motive, and he decides to investigate all his fellow tourists, finding hidden greed, treachery, theft, and adultery.

Wexford is staying in London with his nephew Howard, a police superintendent, convalescing from over-work and under doctor's orders to drink only water. He is supposed to be resting, but he is bored, and his nephew is dealing with a fascinating murder case. The body of a young woman, Loveday Morgan, was found in Kenbourne Vale Cemetery, strangled with a silk scarf, and the only things in her handbag were a photograph and two telephone numbers. It appears that she had no money and was living under a false name. Wexford, keen to get out and about, is drawn to the case. His unofficial investigation uncovers a story of adoption and parental love.

A local clergyman is anxious to re-open a thirty-year-old murder case, which resulted in Harry Painter being hanged for the axe-murder of an elderly woman. Wexford himself, as a young detective sergeant, helped to convict Painter, and he has to face the possibility that the wrong man was hanged.

Wexford joins forces with the bridegroom when his best man is killed at the stag party. And Charlie Hatton's death is only the first in a string of murders which seem to be about cheating husbands, loose women and gangsters.

The Kingsmarkham rock festival is going smoothly until the disfigured body of of a local girl, thought to be living in London, is found in a nearby quarry. Wexford investigates the links between a charismatic singer and a young woman gone to the bad.

The Kingsmarkham police investigate the disappearance of John Lawrence, a five-year-old boy.Seven-and-a-half months after he goes missing, mad, taunting letters begin to arrive, and another child, Stella Rivers, vanishes.

Wexford finds he is dealing with a very nasty case when nature-loving Elizabeth Nightingale is murdered on one of her nightly walks through the woods around Myfleet Manor.

Luke Crossland is a respectable widowed Church of England clergyman, with an important job in a cathedral... but his wife's death came about in strange circumstances, and now Luke's eldest daughter wants to know more about what happened...

John Creevey has recently separated from his wife Jennifer and is still obsessed with her and Peter Mullin, the new man in her life. Many years ago his sister Cherry had been murdered and her fiancé, Mark Simms, now John's best friend, had been the prime suspect. When the police reopen the case and Simms is again under suspicion, John begins to doubt his friend's innocence, until Mark tells him of sordid details about Cherry's promiscuous past - and her relationship with Peter Mullin. When John discovers a series of coded messages hidden beneath a railway bridge, he throws himself into solving them, as a way of taking his mind off Jennifer. He believes that he has uncovered the communications of a gang of terrorists, not realising that it is just schoolboys at rival public sc

Wexford goes on holiday to Corsica and on arriving home receives a call from a man he met there who claims his wife has been kidnapped. Wexford investigates and finds that the missing woman is in fact dead.

An old man, Sir Mañuel Camarque, dies when he loses his foothold on a dark winter night, slips into a lake and drowns under the ice. It looks like an open-and-shut case. However...Camarque, who was a world-famous flautist, planned to marry Dinah Sternhold, a woman young enough to be his grand-daughter. The banns of the marriage had just been read for the third time in church and Sir Mañuel was nervous. Dinah tells Wexford that Camarque had suspicions that his daughter Natalie (who would inherit his fortune) was not his daughter at all but an impostor. Wexford investigates, and develops a theory of an intruder who pushed the old man into the lake.

Gwen Robson, a middle-aged housewife who proves to have been a blackmailer, is found garotted in the car park of a suburban shopping mall. Wexford is no sooner on the case than a car bomb goes off and all but kills him, putting him in hospital. This leaves Mike Burden with the task of solving the case, but he goes off on the wrong scent. Wexford's analysis is better, though.

On Christmas Eve, Wexford and Burden are called to the Kingsmarkham Hospital. A baby has been stolen from its pram and another baby left behind in its place, and it seems that the mother of the stolen child may also be in danger.