The Rottweiler (Thorndike Press Large Print Basic Series) - Hardcover

Rendell, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786266422 ISBN 13: 9780786266425

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 2005

Synopsis

A serial killer known as the "Rottweiler" stalks the young women of a London neighborhood near Lisson Grove, and the only clue lies in the trinkets taken by the killer from each victim, items that start to turn up at a local antique shop.

About this title

Review

Ruth Rendell's The Rottweiler centres on a small group of Londoners, one of whom is, as it happens, a serial killer. There is never any particular mystery to the omniscient narrator, or the reader listening to her, as to who the killer is--the questions at stake are: who is going to fall under suspicion, whether the killer will be caught and why on earth the killer has this periodic urge to garotte a variety of women and steal an item of jewellery from them.

We spend a lot of time with some interesting flawed people--Inez, the widow obsessed with her late actor husband, in whose junk shop the killer occasionally dumps clues; Will, the beautiful stupid boy whose aunt is torn about the prospect of a life spent looking after him; Zeinab, the young woman who may or may not have a violently jealous father and certainly has too many fiancées. We see these people through their own indulgent eyes and through the more jaundiced, but hardly more accurate eyes of killer and investigating police--Rendell is intelligent about self-deception and inner lives and the way we construct parts of our own identity through self-interested disapproval of others. --Roz Kaveney

Review

"Compelling and disturbing" (The Times)

"In Rendell's expert hands, you'll want to keep reading until dawn - with the light on" (Red)

"Rendell skilfully crafts her characters and they breathe feverishly through her imagination" (The Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0786266422
• ISBN 13: 9780786266425
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 592