International bestselling author Ruth Rendell delivers a first-rate new Inspector Wexford mystery--a traditional British whodunit rendered unique by Rendell's celebrated gift for characterization and social commentary.

At first there was no reason to link the killings. The one, months earlier, seemed totally random: a lump of concrete, pushed off an overpass onto a passing car. By contrast, the bludgeoning death of Amber, returning home late after night-clubbing with her teenaged friends, was obviously calculated. The killer had been seen waiting for the girl in a nearby wood. But when Inspector Wexford found that Amber had been the driver right behind the crushed car--and that both were Hondas of similar vintage and color--he knew that someone had wanted the teenager dead badly enough to kill twice to get the job done. And the murders had not yet come to an end.

From the Hardcover edition....

"The best mystery writer in the English-speaking world." --Time

"One of the most remarkable novelists of her generation." --People

"Her clear shapely prose casts the mesmerizing spell of the confessional." --The New Yorker

"She has transcended her genre by her remarkable imaginative power to explore and illuminate the dark corners of the human psyche." --P. D. James

"Surely one of the greatest novelists presently at work in our language." --Scott Turow

"Those who haven't read her books have missed something unique and wonderful." --Tony Hillerman

"Ruth Rendell is my dream writer. Her prose style, so intricate in design and supple in execution, has the disquieting intimacy of an alien touch in the dark." --Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

"Unequivocally the most brilliant mystery writer of our time. She magnificently triumphs in a style that is uniquely hers and mesmerizing."