Ruth Rendell: Talking To Strange Men (USA 1988)

From the Publisher:
"Rendell proves herself once again to be the thinking person's crime writer."
Chicago Tribune
"Miss Rendell... gives us a game of wits as sharp as that played by her brilliant schoolboys..."
The New Yorker
"Exhibit(s) one of her greatest narrative strengths: an uncanny knack for the cunning final twist that seems at once wholly logical and wholly unexpected."
Newsweek

Safe houses and secret message drops, double crosses and defections -- it sounds like the stuff of sophisticated espionage, but the agents and moles are schoolboys engaged in harmless play.

John Creevey doesn't know this. To him, the messages he painstakingly decodes are the communications of dangerous men, and as he comes face to face with the fact of his beloved wife Jennifer's defection, he begins to see a way to get back at the man she left him for.

And soon the boys are playing more than just a game...

Here is a brilliant, tantalizing novel, a tightly constructed puzzle only the masterful Ruth Rendell could create.

FIRST TIME IN PAPERBACK!

Ruth Rendell: Talking To Strange Men. Ballantine Books, ISBN 0345351746 (October, 1988), 309 p., $3.95.

Ruth Rendell: Talking To Strange Men (UK 1988)

From the Publisher:
'Ruth Rendell's mesmerising capacity to shock, chill and disturb is unmatched'
THE TIMES

The messages were coming in thick and fast. Coded messages that John Creevey should never have seen. Was it a major spy ring? A drugs gang? A protection racket? Whatever, to John Creevey the messages were a lifeline... a means of getting back his wife and perhaps a way to harm the man who had seduced her away from him.

'Difficult to put down... she begins with the everyday, the ordinary and transmutes it into an almost Gothic tale of suspense and quiet terror'
DAILY EXPRESS
'Stunningly clever... another notable example of Miss Rendell's ingenuity and versatility'
SPECTATOR
'Startling, disturbing, seductive... an uncanny knack for the cunning final twist'
NEWSWEEK
'A marvellous piece of work'
TODAY
'Splendidly paced and thoroughly disturbing'
TIME OUT.

Ruth Rendell: Talking To Strange Men. Arrow, ISBN 0099535300 (September, 1988), 298 p., £2.99.

Ruth Rendell: Talking To Strange Men (USA 1987)

From the Publisher:
Purloined code books... a network of agents and moles... safe houses and secret message drops... doublecrosses and defections...
It is the stuff of sophisticated espionage, and the fact that the operatives are schoolboys never diminishes the gravity with which they play their game. After all, they had certainly made a difference in some lives with the information they'd gathered. Mungo had enthusiastically taken over as head of London Central when his brother tired of the endless duel with Moscow Centre, and Mungo's suspicion that a counteragent was betraying them demanded real attention.

But what Mungo doesn't know is that the intruder is not the rival team, but a lonely, inquisitive clerk who thinks he's decoding messages from an actual international spy ring. Aching from his wife's recent desertion, he plots to use this network to unmask the unsavory man who has stolen her away. The paths of adults and children crisscross in an ever more complex web of maneuvers, until a terrifying headlong encounter makes it clear that this is a game no longer.

Only Ruth Rendell could weave these strands together with such subtle finesse. One of her most tantalizing novels to date, Talking to Strange Men demonstrates just why she is the reigning queen of psychological suspense.

Ruth Rendell: Talking To Strange Men. Pantheon Books, ISBN 0394563247 (September, 1987), 280 p., $16.95.