The Monster in the Box
The twenty-second Wexford novel published by Hutchinson in 2009
If Wexford has sometimes seemed at the mercy of events, here we see his intelligence in full control as he both reasons out the chains of events and enters the killer’s mind as he lies in wait for his victims. This is a superb investigator and we can see why Wexford has risen so high in his profession.
Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never set eyes on Eric Targo’s short, muscular figure again. And yet there he was, back in Kingsmarkham, still with that cocky, strutting walk.
Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, a woman called Elsie Carroll had been found strangled in her bedroom. Although many still had suspicions about her husband, no one was ever convicted.
Another woman was strangled shortly afterwards, and every personal and professional instinct told Wexford that the killer was still at large. And that it was Eric Targo. A psychopathic murderer who would kill again.
As the Chief Inspector investigates a new case, Ruth Rendell looks back to the beginning of Wexford’s career as a detective, even to his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. The villainous Targo is not the only ghost from Wexford’s past who has re-emerged to haunt him in the here and now.
Notes
Dedication:
For Simon, my son, who told me about the box.
So when I’m writing about him (Wexford), I’m not creating a character so much as putting myself as a man on the page.
—Ruth Rendell 2Independent production companies take out options on The Keys to the Street, Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, The Rottweiler and The House of Stairs.
Contemporary Reads 3
Karin Fossum - The Caller
Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
Robert Harris - Lustrum
Gillian Flynn - Dark Places
China Miéville - The City & The City
Footnotes
Book review, Independent) 2011. ↩︎
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