Best-selling contemporary British author of police detective fiction, thrillers and psychological crime novels, Ruth Rendell continues to trouble the contested boundary between “popular” and “literary” writer. She publishes in three related genres. Beginning in 1964, From Doon with Death introduces her liberal policeman, Inspector Wexford, guardian of fictional south of England town, Kingsmarkham. Rendell’s second work, To Fear a Painted Devil (1965), is the first of her crime thrillers. These do not contain the reassuring presence of the detective. Rendell alternated these crime genres until 1986, and the publication of her first psychological novel under the name of Barbara Vine. A Dark-Adapted Eye demonstrated wha

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First published 22 October 2004

Citation: Rowland, Susan A.. "Ruth Rendell". The Literary Encyclopedia. 22 October 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3746, accessed 20 November 2009.]