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By the mid 1990s
she had produced, in addition to a non-fiction book about Suffolk and
a great deal of journalism, nearly fifty crime novels and collections
of short stories. Her books, which can often be macabre and shocking,
divide into three types: police procedurals featuring Inspector Wexford;
studies of abnormal psychology, which include such unforgettable books
as The Lake of Darkness and A Judgement in Stone; and the novels she
began publishing during the 1980s as Barbara Vine. She took her second
Christian name, which is Barbara, and her great-grandmother's maiden
name, which is Vine. It has often been
said that Rendell straddles the gap between crime and literary fiction.
There is no denying her fertile imagination and chilling observations
of city and suburban atmospheres. Rendell has lived in Chelsea and on
Hyde Park, in Highgate and Hampstead, in West Hampstead, Kilburn, Cricklewood
and Regent's Park. She describes many routes in her books. Each year she produces two novels, and it
would seem that her life, "all writing and publicity," is
as driven and relentless as her work. She has won many awards including
four Gold Daggers and three Edgar Allen Poe's. Her books have been translated
into twenty-two languages and are also published to great acclaim in
the United States. One is either a story-teller or one is not. And if you are a story-teller, and it is possible for you to write, you will start writing stories." (Interview in The Irish Times 1996) "I would think that the old-fashioned detective story which is so much a matter of clues and puzzles, is certainly on the way out, if not already gone. Crime novels now are much more novels of character, and novels which look at the world we live in." (Interview in The Irish Times 1996) Writing is, while the process going on, a very private thing for me. I understand, I quite like the idea that some people write something and they read or show it to a friend or a companion or somebody they live with, and discuss it. But to me that's impossible. If I do that, the whole thing falls apart. It's as if it's brought into the light of day, and reality destroys it. I never discuss it at all. (Ruth Rendell 1996) |