Road Rage - Hardcover

Rendell, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609600567 ISBN 13: 9780609600566

Publisher: Crown, 1997

Synopsis

Winner of multiple Edgar and Gold Dagger awards including the most prestigious Edgar of them all, the Grand Master, Ruth Rendell returns with a novel that pits Chief Inspector Wexford against a quite personal foe: the environmental terrorists who kidnap and threaten the lives of five hostages--including Wexford's own wife.

As Road Rage begins, Chief Inspector Wexford is walking through Framhurst Great Wood, just outside his beloved town of Kingsmarkham, for what he tells himself will be the last time. He can no longer bear to look at the natural beauty that will soon be despoiled by the construction of a new highway. Wexford rather despairs of the project; his more sanguine wife, Dora, is active on a committee to save the threatened land. Others are more desperate to achieve their end, and their means include the taking of hostages, including Dora, and the threat to begin murdering them.

How Wexford and his dedicated team of police officers race against time to learn the identity of the kidnappers and discover the whereabouts of the hostages will rivet readers who delight in following the intricate details of an intensive police investigation. But, as in every Ruth Rendell novel, the mortal drama raises political and moral questions that are not resolved with the closing of the case, and that apply far beyond the limits of Kingsmarkham.

About this title

Review:

Nobody has a better ear for the whine of the unloved and underappreciated than Ruth Rendell. Early in this Inspector Wexford adventure, a young woman who was bound and gagged during a robbery demands victim counseling; not long after, families of some people taken hostage quickly cluster themselves into a support group. The titular "road rage" is equally timely and politically correct: protestors have gathered from around the world to stop, by whatever means they can, a new motorway that will cut through some of the woods surrounding Wexford's fictional but endearing village of Kingsmarkham.

From the Publisher:

"Rendell's evolution from the unnervingly focused analyst of plausible psychoses to the more outward chronicler who uses crime to diagnose the ills of contemporary Britain one of the glories of today's mystery fiction continues in a masterful tale of eco-terrorism that chills Chief Inspector Wexford as none of his earlier cases have. . . .Rendell's most probing and ambitious book since well, since Wexford's Edgar winning last appearance in Simisola (1995)."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"The latest Inspector Wexford tale (following Simisola,1995) from the redoubtable Rendell has a spectacularly unexpected twist. . . . Such eternal questions as enduring marital affection and love of the English countryside are the engines that make this Wexford outing move in Rendell's usual absorbing way."
--Publishers Weekly

"Rendell, as always, skillfully constructs a plot of twists and turns that manages to be both surprising and logical."
--Mary Higgins Clark Mystery

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0609600567
• ISBN 13: 9780609600566
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 344