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The Monster in the Box

The Monster in the Box

The twenty-second Wexford novel published by Hutchinson in


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.

Jane Jakeman 1

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

Contemporary Reads 3

Footnotes

  1. Book review, Independent 2011. ↩︎

  2. Introducing mystery writer Ruth Rendell. 2009. ↩︎

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