Adam And Eve And Pinch Me: a superbly chilling psychological thriller from the award-winning queen of crime, Ruth Rendell - Softcover

Rendell, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099426196 ISBN 13: 9780099426196

Publisher: Arrow, 2002

Synopsis

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, at work, 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, and five women are haunted by a living nightmare, Minty begins to wonder... Can you kill a ghost?

About this title

Review:

In Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, Ruth Rendell once again tackles the dark and dangerous side of human psychology. It is this quality that defines her as a writer and distinguishes her from the other British Queens of Crime: PD James and Minette Walters (although some would argue that Val McDermid is now in that category). She take the reader into a more sinister and threatening world than any of her contemporaries, and there is a reason why she remains non-pareil in this territory: a reason demonstrated with disturbing impact in Adam and Eve and Pinch Me.

Rendell's speciality is her ability to enter the psychopathology of her characters and make us not only understand their often murderous behaviour, but also vicariously participate. It's a skill that Hitchcock made his own in the cinema, but he rarely moved into such black waters as Rendell. This new book continues a trend initiated in earlier work by Rendell: the grafting of supernatural elements into a typical Rendellian tale of menace. And what makes the ghost in the new book so disturbing is the total avoidance of cliché: no grey, wispy phantom, this--it is disturbingly corporeal.

Jock Lewis died in the Paddington train crash. Or did he? His fiancée Minty is coming to terms with both his loss and the loss of all her savings, which Jock vanished with. And there is Zilla, who had been married to a man called Jerry Leach. She also received a letter from the railway company telling her that her husband is dead. Other women, too, who do not know each other, have all had relationships with a dark-haired man who disappears from their lives. And when Jock's ghost reappears to Minty at her home and at her work, she begins to carry a knife... but if she stabs him, will he bleed?

Rendell has always been a writer who likes to take risks, and the danger here was that Adam and Eve and Pinch Me would end up as a smorgasbord of supernatural and crime elements, each cancelling the other out. But Rendell is far too assured a writer for this, and the balance between the different aspects of the book is always kept rigorously in place. So many writers fall into dull repetition; here, again, Rendell demonstrates that she's going from strength to strength. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

"With her usual deft touch, Rendell pulls the strands of the story together, weaving a taut and terrifying narrative" (Val McDermid Daily Express)

"Here are the fears that haunt us, the nightmarish urban myths of our time ... One of the most remarkable talents writing today" (Jane Jakeman Independent)

"Rendell's psychological novels remain in a class of their own" (Susanna Yager Sunday Telegraph)

"It is ... her ability ... to tap into registers of feeling which range from the commonplace to the psychopathic. She is to be treasured." (Anita Brookner Spectator)

"A great storyteller who knows how to make sure that the reader has to turn the pages out of a desperate need to find out what is going to happen next." (John Mortimer Sunday Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0099426196
• ISBN 13: 9780099426196
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448