The Keys to the Street

by Ruth Rendell

Overview

From Edgar Award-winning author Ruth Rendell, quiet, pretty Mary Jago could never have suspected that a series of unspeakable murders in the park contained threads that tangled around her simple, ordinary life.

Set near London's Regent's Park, where the city's wealthiest, poorest, kindest, and most vicious citizens all cross paths, The Keys to the Street reminds us how interconnected life can be and how we're often surrounded by people that we fail to see. 

Mary generously donates her bone marrow to save the life of a young man she doesn't know, which will change her life forever. It leads to her bitter break up with Alistair and then to a relationship with the young man whose life she saved, Leo Nash. But when the homeless who seek refuge in the park start turning up murdered and impaled on the spiked railings that surround it, Mary is closer to danger than she ever could have imagined.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307801142
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/07/2011
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

RUTH RENDELL (1930-2015) wrote more than seventy books and sold more than twenty million copies worldwide. An Edgar Award winner and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (London), she was the recipient of the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Crime Writers' Association. Rendell also wrote mysteries under the name of Barbara Vine. 

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

Patricia Cornewell

"Ruth Rendell is, unequivocally, the most brilliant mysery novelist of our time."

John Mortimer

"She is one of our most important novelist."

Reading Group Guide

1. Do you feel Rendell is more interested in exploring the psychological states of her characters than in unravelling a elaborate plot or solving a complex crime? How does this affect your enjoyment of the book?

2. There is relatively little violence in The Keys to the Street and what there is, is not particularly graphic. Consider the methods the author uses to generate the book's atmosphere of tension and menace.

3. How does Rendell's prose style contribute to the novel's feeling of near-reality?

4. Discuss the ways in which the author links together the different worlds of her characters. What devices does she use? How successful are they?

5. Are the issues around themes such as homelessness, drug addiction and bone marrow transplants explored convincingly? Should The Keys to the Street be regarded as more than just a crime novel?

6. At the end of a traditional murder-mystery, social order is restored by the identification and punishment of the criminal. How is the world of The Keys to the Street not only different, but more disturbing?

Editorial Reviews

Mary Jago is a gentle, passive, unselfish young woman. Her fiancesometimes beats her, and other people often take advantage of her sweet nature. She willingly donates her bone marrow to an anonymous leukemia victim. Months later, the recipient gratefully contacts her. Once she meets Leo, Mary experiences an odd sensation that she and he are magically linked and inevitably finds herself falling in love with this gentle, mysterious man. But nothing is as it seems. Other events and people in Mary's life are curiously intertwined in ways that will touch her dramatically. A series of brutal killings, with homeless men as victims; a man recovering from the tragic death of his family; a cruel little man who walks Mary's dog; a drug addict with a desperate and deadly habit; the death of Mary's grandmother--each of these events plays a role in an end-of-the-story climax that is at once tragic, shocking, satisfying, and hopeful. Without a doubt, Rendell ranks with today's finest writers, and this book is one of her best, examining the intricate and complex relationships between people, the possibilities and influences of good and evil in each life, the odd quirks of human nature, and the darker side of the human soul. Superbly written and beautifully constructed, the story is unique, powerful, and provocative.

Emily Melton

A delicate London flower plucks up the courage to walk out on her abusive lover—and into a vintage Rendell nightmare.

Taking advantage of her house-sitting gig outside Regent's Park, Mary Jago gives Alistair Fowler his notice; and as if by magic, a new romantic interest springs up: Leo Nash, the recipient of Mary's bone-marrow transplant, whom she's previously known only as Oliver. Leo's as gentle and considerate, as sympathetic and loving, as Alistair was everything but, and in no time Mary's counting the hours between their decorous meetings. But there are already clouds Mary doesn't see on the horizon. At first the omens are only vaguely troubling, circling around the obsessions of Roman Ashton, a magazine editor sunk to life on the streets after losing his family to a freak accident; old Leslie Bean, who can't forget his irregular relations with his late employers; and Hob, who drifts through the park in a perpetual haze while he's waiting for his next fix. But the menace soon takes on a sharper edge. The police start to find street people gruesomely impaled on the ornamental gates of the park. Bean, who's been mugged in the park, swears revenge against his attacker and considers a spot of genteel blackmail on the side. Alistair turns out to be more persistent—and more vindictive—than Mary could ever have imagined. Veterans of Rendell's peerlessly doomy fantasies (The Crocodile Bird, 1993, etc.) will know that all these perturbations are nothing more than symptoms of the real problem: the secret that makes perfect mate Leo perfectly dreadful.

Like Rendell's last Chief Inspector Wexford mystery (Simisola, 1995), this poignant tale shows the author at her most extroverted: Under her tireless probing, every social class that Regent's Park brings together turns out to be equally pathological.

Kirkus Reviews