The Vault: (A Wexford Case) - Tapa dura

"Unequivocally, the most brilliant mystery writer of our time. She magnificently triumphs in a style that is uniquely hers and mesmerising" (Patricia Cornwell)

"Ruth Rendell is a marvel, and in the latest Inspector Wexford mystery she's on cracking form . . . The book's pacing is perfect. It starts gently as we, like Wexford, enjoy his new life of leisure. But once he puts his formidable brain to work, the violence kicks in. The result is a total page-turner - and one of Rendell's very, very best novels." (A.N. Wilson Reader's Digest)

"The Vault sees Rendell for the first time marry the two genres she is master of: the psychological thriller and the police whodunit . . . With 60 novels put to page and still counting, Rendell will soon match the prolific output of Agatha Christie - who penned 66 works. It's hard to imagine where the inspiration comes from, but find it she does - and there's not a clue out of place or a shoehorned plotline in sight." (Time Out)

"Ruth Rendell is bidding fair to join Defoe and Dickens in creating one of the great criminal cities of literature. Her view of London is a similar murderous topography, less squalid, but with the same tentacles reaching out between rich and poor . . . This mystery is also an enormously enjoyable panorama of London and a hymn of love to its Georgian houses . . . She, and Wexford are the sharpest modern observers of the "Great Wen"" (Independent)

"The Vault, as a sort-of-sequel is a bold attempt to combine Rendell's two chosen specialties: the police procedural and the psychological thriller. No one hides the clues better than her; no one else creates such a pervasive atmosphere of almost comic disgust and dread. The act of cross pollination proves most fruitful and triumphantly demonstrates that a vault, in addition to being an underground chamber, can also be a leap of imagination." (Evening Standard)