When the body of a brutally beaten girl is found in a quarry during a hedonistic hippy festival at Sundays near Kingsmarkham, Wexford is first on the scene. Through a web of lies and deceit Wexford uncovers a history of love and hate, and realises that never has he witnessed a murder of such desperate passion.

This case is proving a difficult one for Chief Inspector Wexford. All he has to go on is his own intuitive suspicions. Was he becoming cynical and untrusting or was this one of the most ingenious crimes he had ever tackled?

With no clues as to the murdered woman's identity, all Wexford has to go on is his imagination.
The body found under the hedge was that of a middle-aged woman, biggish and gaunt. The grey eyes were wide and staring, and in them, Detective Chief Inspector Wexford thought he saw a sardonic gleam, a glare, even in death, of scorn. But that must have been his imagination, and his imagination was almost all he had to go on.
The woman was a stranger. Her handbag held little more than three keys on a ring and forty-two pounds in a new wallet. There was nothing to give him her address, her...

Sir Manuel Camargue's death was ruled Misadventure, yet in spite of himself, Chief Inspector Wexford has niggling doubts.
Sir Manuel Camargue, one of the greatest flautists of his time, was dead. An old man, ankle-deep in snow, he lost his foothold in the dark, slipping into water to be trapped under a lid of ice. Only a glove remained to point where he lay, one of its fingers pointing up out of the drifts.
There's nothing Chief Inspector Wexford likes better than an open-and-shut case. They're so restful. And yet there are one or two niggling doubts and the disturbing return of...

The messages were coming in thick and fast. Coded messages that John Creevey should never have seen. But the messages were a lifeline to John - a means of getting back his wife and perhaps a way to harm the man who had seduced her away from him.

The chance discovery by Eugene Wren of an envelope filled with banknotes would link the lives of a number of very different people - each with their own obsessions, problems, dreams and despairs. It would also set in motion a chain of events that lead to arson and murder.

As the Chief Inspector investigates a new case, Ruth Rendell looks back to the beginning of Wexford's career, to his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. The past is a haunted place, with clues and passions that leave an indelible imprint on the here and now.

When Stuart Font decides to throw a house-warming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building. The party will be one everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons. All the occupants of Lichfield House are about to experience a dramatic change in their lives.

In this psychological thriller, Ruth Rendell probes behind public facades to reveal private torment and distorted visions that change the way the world appears to normal human beings."

In the peaceful garden of a London house, a manhole cover has just been raised. Inside the cellar lie three bodies. Two men and a woman. None carry identification. The men have been there for twelve years; the woman for only two. For Inspector Wexford, this is a case worth coming out of retirement for.