Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
A stand-alone novel published by Hutchinson in 2001
We are guessing from the first page what Ruth Rendell is up to in Adam and Eve and Pinch Me because she writes within a genre that she has herself redefined.
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, work, and 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, the five women are haunted by a living nightmare, and Minty begins to wonder, can you kill a ghost?
Notes
The Paddington rail disaster remembered 15 years on.
John Mullan looks at the opening lines of Adam and Eve and Pinch Me.
Red Sail reviews one of his favourite Ruth Rendell novels for RNIB.
Contemporary Reads 2
Edward Wright - Clea’s Moon
P.D. James - Death in Holy Orders
Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Shadow Of The Wind
Dennis Lehane - Mystic River
Helen Dunmore - The Siege
Sebastian Faulks- On Green Dolphin Street
Footnotes
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