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The Saint Zita Society

The Saint Zita Society

A stand-alone novel published by Hutchinson in


As with most of my work, an idea came to me out of the blue for Saint Zita. There is a poor, disturbed, superstitious man who believes a god lives in his cellphone. It is his personal god, a supernatural being who advises him and commands him. Once I’d got that idea, I had to have a setting for him, and the next step was to make him a servant—in his case, a gardener—among the sort of people who are servants today. These are the modern kind of servants—nannies, au pairs, drivers—and quite different types from what were customary in the past.

Ruth Rendell 1

Life in the well-manicured London locale of Hexam Place is not as placid and orderly as it appears. Behind the tranquil gardens and polished entryways, relationships between servants and their employers are set to combust.

When millionaire banker, Preston Still, kills his wife’s lover by pushing him down the stairs, he looks to the family au pair to help him dispose of the body.

But the au pair belongs to the Saint Zita Society, a self-formed group of drivers, nannies and gardeners who are servants to the rich and whose intentions are not entirely benign.

Notes

Contemporary Reads 3

Footnotes

  1. A chat with Ruth Rendell. Publisher’s Weekly 2012 ↩︎

  2. The Incorruptible St. Zita ↩︎

  3. Book links may earn this site a small commission. ↩︎