Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) - Softcover

Rendell, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1400031184 ISBN 13: 9781400031184

Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2003

Synopsis

Minty' s boyfriend, Jock, was killed in the disastrous train wreck at Paddington, shortly after he borrowed all her savings. Now he has come back to haunt her. Zillah lost her estranged husband, Jerry, in that same accident. She is not convinced he is actually dead, but for reasons of her own decides not to pursue the matter. Fiona' s fiance, Jeff, has simply disappeared- quite inexplicably since she was supporting him in style. In her ingeniously unnerving new novel, Ruth Rendell deftly traces the connections among these women- and between them a series of vicious stabbings terrifying London. Adam and Eve and Pinch Me is a masterpiece of malice and psychological suspense.

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:

"Another exemplary product of Rendell's fertile imagination. Delivers what mystery lovers want. Above all, fascination." -The Washington Post Book World

"Rendell builds plots the way the Romans built bridges, erecting graceful, arching affairs that soar high because they are sunk deep and cost a human life or two." -The New York Times Book Review

"A neat little microcosm of the Rendell universe, in which innocence and experience, the macabre and playful, the sadistic and romantic, all rub shoulders . . . before erupting into a kind of spontaneously lethal combustion." -The Boston Globe

"Disquieting, compelling . . . Rendell is a literary Hitchcock, coming at stories from unexpected angles." -Chicago Tribune

"Rendell terrorizes with the subtle authority of a cat burglar in the night." -San Francisco Chronicle

"Whether she's writing as herself or under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, Rendell is never boring. Adam and Eve is no exception." -USA Today

"A true page-turner, with a haunting ending that stayed with me long after I had read the final sentences." -St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Rendell's genius is to create characters so vivid they live beyond the frame of the novel. She pushes the ordinary to the point of the bizarre while remaining consistently believable." -Publishers Weekly

"Rendell writes with such elegance and restraint, with such a literate voice and an insightful mind, that she transcends the mystery genre and achieves something almost sublime." -Los Angeles Times

"Madly absorbing . . . Rendell's characters are fully drawn, and we become completely caught up in their struggles." -Booklist

"Ruth Rendell is, unequivocally, the most brilliant mystery novelist of our times." -Patricia Cornwell

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1400031184
• ISBN 13: 9781400031184
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368