Ruth Rendell: The Babes in the Wood (USA 2004)

From the Publisher:
"Hard to put down... Ruth Rendell is a master of the genre." -- Los Angeles Times
With floods threatening both the town of Kingsmarkham and his own home and no end to the rain in sight, Chief Inspector Wexford already has his hands full when he learns that two local teenagers have gone missing along with their sitter, Joanna Troy. Their hysterical mother is convinced that all three have drowned, and as the hours stretch into days Wexford suspects a case of kidnapping, perhaps connected with an unusual sect called the Church of the Good Gospel. But when the sitter's smashed-up car is found at the bottom of a local quarry -- occupied by a battered corpse -- the investigation takes on a very different hue.

The Babes in the Wood is Ruth Rendell at her very best, a scintillating, precise and troubling story of seduction and religious fanaticism -- and murder.

"Subtle, mysterious... Through flawless character work, Rendell transforms what could be a conventional suspense story into a close, and at times cruelly funny, psychological study of domestic disorder." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Wonderful... Rendell, as usual, gives us more than a mere mystery here. Her novel is a multilayered construction in which a case acts itself out amid nature's dark forces and the even darker forces that shape the psyches of the village inhabitants." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Ruth Rendell: The Babes in the Wood. A Chief Inspector Wexford Mystery. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN 1400034191 (October, 2004), 325 p., $13.00.

Ruth Rendell: The Babes in the Wood (USA 2003)

From the Publisher:
"Ruth Rendell is the ultimate anatomist of the human psyche, probing behind facades to reveal private torment and distorted visions that change the way we view the world around us." -- VAL MCDERMID, Autor of The Last Temptation

After weeks of rain, Chief Inspector Wexford has just finished moving his books and furniture upstairs to protect them from the rising waters when the telephone rings. Two local teenagers and their babysitter have gone missing. Wexford isn't particularly worried, since these things usually sort themselves out. But as hours stretch into days, he begins to suspect he has a kidnapping on his hands. The stakes get even higher when a member of the missing trio turns up dead in the woods nearby.

In the course of his investigation, Wexford must deal with a neighbor whose alibi is questionable, a religious cult and its sylvan rituals, someone close to the children's family who nurses a terrible secret, and the babysitter's ex-husband, who reveals the woman's hidden penchant for violence.

In The Babes in the Wood, Ruth Rendell draws the reader into a riveting story that alternates between Chief Inspector Wexford's domestic life -- his worries about the security of his home and his daughter's odd new boyfriend -- and his determination to see through a kaleidoscope of lies and bring a murderer to justice.

Ruth Rendell: The Babes in the Wood. A Chief Inspector Wexford Mystery. Crown Publishers, ISBN 140004930X (October, 2003), 325 p., $25.00.

Ruth Rendell: The Babes in the Wood (UK 2003)

From the Publisher:
There hadn't been anything like this kind of rain in living memory. The River Brede had burst its banks, and not a single house in the valley had escaped the flooding. In the midst of all this, two teenagers - Giles and Sophie Dade and Joanna Troy, the woman who had been looking after them, have vanished. The Subaqua Task Force could find no trace of them, but Mrs Dade was still convinced her children were dead.

The investigation would call into question many of Wexford's assumptions about the way people behaved, including his own family...

'The Babes in the Wood extends the convention of the whodunit.' -- Sunday Times
'Superb plotting and psychological insight make this another Rendell gripper.' -- Woman & Home
'Utterly absorbing.' -- Sunday Telegraph

Ruth Rendell: The Babes in the Wood. Arrow, ISBN 0099435446 (July, 2003), 401 p., £6.99.