A case in point is Ruth Rendell, whose new novel, The Girl Next Door, just appeared. not your typical crime story, but it is a typical Rendell book - cunningly observed, elegantly written., 'Only recently has it been common for novelists to work into their late 70s and beyond - not merely producing new work but writing at a very high level. The Girl Next Door is no exception., A must read. Rendell never descends into mere formula. Part of the miracle is that with more than 60 books to her credit over a half-century career, Ms.

This book is extraordinarily courageous, a demonstration that fiction can take us where reportage dares not go., is one of the most literate living writers of fictionâ€¦Her witty style and her endless trove of subtle references to fellow writers (living and dead) are matched by a timeliness that always takes on contemporary social issues along with the invented mystery that propels her plot into action. 'Rendell's wit, always mordant, has never been sharper than when she skewers patronizing assumptions about the elderly' ( Chicago Tribune ). Is the truth buried amid the tangled relationships of these aging men and women and their memories? Will it emerge before it's too late? Stephen King says, 'no one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability, and malignant coincidence.' In The Girl Next Door -'yet another gem' ( The Washington Post )-Rendell brilliantly shows that the choices people make, and the emotions behind them, remain as potent in late life as they were in youth. Then the police investigation sputters, and the threads holding their friendship together begin to unravel. As the hands make national news, the friends come together once again, to recall their long ago days for a detective. Six decades later, construction workers make a grisly discovery beneath a house on the same land: a tin box containing two skeletal hands, one male and one female. For that summer of 1944, the subterranean space becomes their 'secret garden,' where the friends play games, tell their fortunes, and perform for each other. In the waning months of the second World War, a group of children discover a tunnel in their neighborhood outside London. INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL'S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS From crime legend Ruth Rendell, a psychologically intriguing novel about an old murder that sends shockwaves across a group of astonishingly carnal and appetiteful elderly friends: 'Refined, probing, and intelligent.never less than a pleasure' ( USA TODAY ).

The girl next door book