Adam And Eve And Pinch Me
a superbly chilling psychological thriller from the award-winning queen of crime, Ruth Rendell
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3.7 • 7 Ratings
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- £0.99
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- £0.99
Publisher Description
From multi-million copy and SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Ruth Rendell, this is a strange, seductive and suspenseful psychological thriller with a cunning final twist that will get right under the skin. Perfect for fans of PD James, Ann Cleeves and Donna Leon.
'Rendell's psychological novels remain in a class of their own' -- Sunday Telegraph
'It is ... her ability ... to tap into registers of feeling which range from the commonplace to the psychopathic. She is to be treasured.' -- Anita Brookner, Spectator
'Ruth Rendell at her very best' -- ***** Reader review
'Excellent story and brilliantly calculated from start to finish' -- ***** Reader review
'Surprising and engrossing' -- ***** Reader review
'A masterpiece' -- ***** Reader review
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Jock Lewis died in the Paddington train crash. His fiancée Minty even received a letter from Great Western. But she never heard from the police, and Jock had left with all her savings.
When a mysterious dark-haired man appears at Minty's home, at work, even in the cinema, she knows it must be Jock's ghost. But ghosts are grey and don't wear leather jackets...
Five women, all unknown to each other, are the simultaneous unwilling victims of one man, a morally corrupt criminal who exploits them all and then suddenly, suspiciously, disappears.
As this mystery man of shadows returns, and five women are haunted by a living nightmare, Minty begins to wonder... Can you kill a ghost?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This latest gem from the British master concerns the wreckage wrought on a variety of Londoners by a womanizing con man who speaks in rhymes. Here, as in A Sight for Sore Eyes(1999), Rendell's genius is to create characters so vivid they live beyond the frame of the novel. She pushes the ordinary to the point of the bizarre while remaining consistently believable. Araminta "Minty" Knox, the fragile center of the plot, is a 30-something woman, alone and obsessed with hygiene, who works in a dry-cleaning shop. All the world is a petri dish for Minty, who sees germs everywhere, which she attacks with Wright's Coal Tar Soap. She is equally tormented by the ghosts she imagines, her domineering "Auntie" and the man who took her virginity. Other characters hover on the borderline between transformation and disaster. Tory MP "Jims" Melcombe-Smith, in bed politically with the "family values" crowd, is simultaneously courting a gay lover. Working-class Zillah Leach, bored with her small children and smaller bank account, schemes to marry up, even at the risk of committing bigamy. This is not a whodunit in the sense of Rendell's Inspector Wexford novels, but a study of crime's origins and especially its consequences as they ripple out beyond the immediate victims. The plot is intricate but brisk, and Rendell nails her characters' psychology in all its perverse logic. She has a travel writer's sensitivity to setting, to the architecture, cemeteries, birds and vegetation of contemporary Britain. This is a literary page-turner, both elegant and accessible. FYI:The title comes from the old riddle rhyme, quoted by Minty's lover: "Adam and Eve and Pinch Me/ Went down to the river to bathe/ Adam and Eve drownded/ Who was saved?"
