The Secret House of Death
A stand-alone novel published by John Long in 1968
Ruth Rendell is one of the true all-time greats. The Secret House of Death changed my life with its utterly perfect, unguessable twist.
It was his third visit to the gloomy house on Orchard Drive. Each time he parked in the same place, carried a briefcase, and was greeted by Louise North at the door.
Is it sin to rush into the secret house of death, ere death dare come to us?
(Antony and Cleopatra, Act 4, Sc. 16)
Susan Townsend was the only resident with no interest in the neighbourhood gossip about the affair going on next door.
Yet it was Susan who found the murdered bodies of the lovers, locked, not in passion, but in death. And it was Susan whose own life would be imperilled by a monstrous crime far beyond the imaginings of the vilest gossiping tongues.
Notes
Abridged into fifteen parts and read by Emily Richard and William Nighy for BBC Radio 4 in 1980.
Adapted for TV by John Harvey in 1996.
The Gothic in Some Rendell Novels and its Protagonists by Jana Mártonová.
Contemporary Reads 2
Barry Hines - A Kestrel for a Knave
Quentin Crisp - The Naked Civil Servant
Iris Murdoch - The Nice and the Good
James Baldwin - Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone
Ursula K. Le Guin - A Wizard of Earthsea
Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö - The Laughing Policeman
Footnotes
@sophiehannahCB1, 2015 ↩︎
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