The Crocodile Bird: a gripping psychological thriller from the award-winning Queen of Crime - Tapa blanda

Ruth Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, and will be remembered as a legend in her own lifetime. Her groundbreaking debut novel, From Doon With Death, was first published in 1964 and introduced the reader to her enduring and popular detective, Inspector Reginald Wexford, who went on to feature in twenty-four of her subsequent novels.

With worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, Rendell was a regular Sunday Times bestseller. Her sixty bestselling novels include police procedurals, some of which have been successfully adapted for TV, stand-alone psychological mysteries, and a third strand of crime novels under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. Very much abreast of her times, the Wexford books in particular often engaged with social or political issues close to her heart.

Rendell won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for 1976’s best crime novel with A Demon in My View, a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986, and the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

Ruth Rendell died in May 2015. Her final novel, Dark Corners, is scheduled for publication in October 2015

Liza is not your average teenager. Sixteen years old, she lives with her mother, Eve, in a secluded gatehouse, which she has never been allowed to leave. There was only enough room for two in their cocoon; intruders entered at their peril, only to mysteriously disappear...

Liza is not the only one to discover the truth behind her mother's pathological violence, or the dead bodies. When the police arrive on their doorstep, Eve throws her daughter into the real world, to protect her from the consequences of her own chilling crimes.

As Liza runs into the arms of her secret lover, she begins to see the logic behind her mother's gruesomes crimes, and must accept the possibility that she has inherited Eve's lust for murder...