Book description
The eleventh book to feature the classic crime-solving detective,
Chief Inspector Wexford.
Sir Manuel Camargue, Kingsmarkham's very own celebrity flautist,
dies tragically on a snowy night. His death is met with a ruling of
misadventure and appears to be an open-and-shut-case. However Wexford,
as the investigating officer, has a few niggling doubts.
Nineteen years later, Camargue's entrancing daughter, Natalie, now a
considerable heiress, suddenly reappears in Kingsmarkham. When her
fiancé appeals to Wexford for help, believing that Natalie is
using a false identity, the case of the Camargues is once more under investigation.
Events soon take a gruesome twist and the pressure is on for Wexford
to discover Natalie's true identity and to solve the mystery of the
Camargue family, once and for all.
Ruth Rendell is crime writing at its very best. The author of over
50 novels, she has won many significant crime fiction awards. Her
first novel, From Doon With Death, appeared in 1964, and since
then her reputation and readership have grown steadily with each new
book.
She has received major awards for her work; three Edgars from the
Mystery Writers of America; the Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Award for
1976's best crime novel, A Demon in My View; the Arts Council
National Book Award for Genre Fiction in 1981 for The Lake of
Darkness; the Crime Writer's Gold Dagger Award for 1986's best
crime book for Live Flesh; in 1987 the Crime Writer's Gold
Dagger Award for A Fatal Inversion and in 1991 the same award
for King Solomon's Carpet, both written under the pseudonym
Barbara Vine; the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990; and in
1991 the Crime Writer's Cartier Diamond Award for outstanding
contribution to the crime fiction genre.
Her books are translated into 21 languages. In 1996 she was awarded
the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.
