Few people under the age of seventeen have read the whole of Virgil in Latin and witnessed two murders. But Liza Beck is no ordinary teenager. She has grown up alone with her mother, Eve, in the remote gatekeeper's cottage of magnificent Shrove House. Here Liza has been nourished by books and her mother's obsessive love, carefully shielded from the "contamination" of the outside world. No newpapers, no TV, no phone, no car, no school.
Liza knows perfectly well she can never leave Shrove House, or her mother, to go with the handsome young drifter who tends the garden. Then one day the police come and take Eve away forever—and now Sean Holford will find out, little by little, all about Liza's past and her mother's fierce, mysterious claim to Shrove House. And to his growing horror, he'll learn about all the men who came there-and never left alive.
Ruth Rendell is the author of Road Rage, The Keys to the Street, Bloodlines, Simisola, and The Crocodile Bird. She is the winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award. She is also the recipient of three Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America and four Gold Daggers from Great Britain’s Crime Writers Association. In 1997, she was named a life peer in the House of Lords. Rendell also writes mysteries under the name of Barbara Vine, of which A Dark-Adapted Eye is the most famous. She lives in England.
Date of Birth:
February 17, 1930
Place of Birth:
London, England
Education:
Loughton County High School for Girls, Essex
What People are Saying About This
Scott Turow
"Billiant mystery...extraordinary depth and accurancy of (Ruth Rendell's) psychological portrait is matched only by the rare inventiveness of her storytelling."
