Zusatztext "Mystery writing of the highest order . . . durable! complex! and affectingly human." --The New York Times Book Review "If there were a craft guild for writers! I'd apprentice myself to Ruth Rendell." --Sue Grafton "Rendell is a master of the form." --Washington Post Book World "Ruth Rendell is the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world." --Time Informationen zum Autor Ruth Rendell is the author of Road Rage , The Keys to the Street , Bloodlines , Simisola , and The Crocodile Bird . She is the winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award. She is also the recipient of three Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America and four Gold Daggers from Great Britain's Crime Writers Association. In 1997, she was named a life peer in the House of Lords. Ruth Rendell also writes mysteries under the name of Barbara Vine, of which A Dark Adapted Eye is the most famous. She lives in England. Klappentext What kind of a person would kidnap two children? That is the question that haunts Wexford when a five-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl disappear from the village of Kingsmarkham. When a child's body turns up at an abandoned country home one search turns into a murder investigation and the other turns into a race against time. Filled with pathos and terror, passion, bitterness, and loss, No More Dying Then is Rendell at her most chillingly astute. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.1 The spell of fine weather which so often occurs in the middle of October is known as St. Luke's Little Summer. The "little summer" part needs no explanation; the St. Luke bit derives from its coincidence with the eighteenth, which is that saint's day. Basking in the warm autumn sunlight, Station Sergeant Camb delivered this piece of interesting but useless information to Harry Wild and smiled sententiously. "Is that so? Maybe I'll do a diary note on it." Wild sucked at his smelly old pipe and rested leather-patched elbows on the counter top. He yawned. "Haven't you got anything more exciting for me?" Camb caught the yawn and yawned himself. He remarked for the third time on the closeness of the weather and then he opened his book. "Two vehicles in collision at the junction of Kingsmarkham High Street and Queen Street," he read. "Nobody hurt. That was Sunday. Nothing in that for the Courier , is there? Girl of seventeen missing, but we know where she is all right. Oh, and there's a baboon got lost from the pet shop . . ." Wild looked up, lazily enquiring. ". . .Only they found it up on their balcony, tucking in to the waste bin." "What a dump," said Wild. He put away his notebook. "Still, I opted for the quiet life. I could be up in Fleet Street tomorrow if I fancied it. Only got to say the word and I'd be up there where it's all happening." "Sure you would." Camb knew very well that Wild remained as chief reporter of the Kingsmarkham Courier because idleness and general ineptitude, as well now as his advancing years, made him unfit for any more illustrious newspaper. Wild had been coming into the police station for more years than Camb cared to remember and every time he came he talked about Fleet Street as if he had rejected it and not it him. But they sustained the fiction for the sake of peace and pleasantness. "Much the same for me," he said. "Many a time in the old days Mr. Wexford begged me to consider the C.I.D. but I wouldn't. I'm ...

"Mystery writing of the highest order . . . durable, complex, and affectingly human."
--The New York Times Book Review

"If there were a craft guild for writers, I'd apprentice myself to Ruth Rendell."
--Sue Grafton

"Rendell is a master of the form."
--Washington Post Book World

"Ruth Rendell is the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world."
--Time

Autorentext

Ruth Rendell is the author of Road Rage, The Keys to the Street, Bloodlines, Simisola, and The Crocodile Bird. She is the winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award. She is also the recipient of three Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America and four Gold Daggers from Great Britain’s Crime Writers Association. In 1997, she was named a life peer in the House of Lords. Ruth Rendell also writes mysteries under the name of Barbara Vine, of which A Dark Adapted Eye is the most famous. She lives in England.

Klappentext

What kind of a person would kidnap two children?

That is the question that haunts Wexford when a five-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl disappear from the village of Kingsmarkham. When a child's body turns up at an abandoned country home one search turns into a murder investigation and the other turns into a race against time. Filled with pathos and terror, passion, bitterness, and loss, No More Dying Then is Rendell at her most chillingly astute.

With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.

Leseprobe
1

The spell of fine weather which so often occurs in the middle of October is known as St. Luke's Little Summer. The "little summer" part needs no explanation; the St. Luke bit derives from its coincidence with the eighteenth, which is that saint's day. Basking in the warm autumn sunlight, Station Sergeant Camb delivered this piece of interesting but useless information to Harry Wild and smiled sententiously.

"Is that so? Maybe I'll do a diary note on it." Wild sucked at his smelly old pipe and rested leather-patched elbows on the counter top. He yawned. "Haven't you got anything more exciting for me?"

Camb caught the yawn and yawned himself. He remarked for the third time on the closeness of the weather and then he opened his book.

"Two vehicles in collision at the junction of Kingsmarkham High Street and Queen Street," he read. "Nobody hurt. That was Sunday. Nothing in that for the Courier, is there? Girl of seventeen missing, but we know where she is all right. Oh, and there's a baboon got lost from the pet shop . . ." Wild looked up, lazily enquiring. ". . .Only they found it up on their balcony, tucking in to the waste bin."

"What a dump," said Wild. He put away his notebook. "Still, I opted for the quiet life. I could be up in Fleet Street tomorrow if I fancied it. Only got to say the word and I'd be up there where it's all happening."

"Sure you would." Camb knew very well that Wild remained as chief reporter of the Kingsmarkham Courier because idleness and general ineptitude, as well now as his advancing years, made him unfit for any more illustrious newspaper. Wild had been coming into the police station for more years than Camb cared to remember and every time he came he talked about Fleet Street as if he had rejected it and not it him. But they sustained the fiction for the sake of peace and pleasantness. "Much the same for me," he said. "Many a time in the old days Mr. Wexford begged me to consider the C.I.D. but I wouldn't. I'm not ambitious. I don't say I wouldn't have had the ability, mind."

"Of course you would've." Playing fair, Wild returned praise for praise. "Where does it get you, though, ambition? Look at Inspector Burden, just to take an example. Worn out, and not forty yet, I daresay."

"Well, he's had a lot…