Road Rage (Inspector Wexford)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440226023 ISBN 13: 9780440226024

Publisher: Dell, 1998

The woods outside of Kingsmarkham were lovely, dark, and deep.  And they were about to vanish forever when the new highway cut through them.  While Chief Inspector Wexford privately despaired about the loss of his hiking grounds, local residents and outsiders were organizing a massive protest.  Some of them were desperate enough to kidnap five hostages and threaten to kill them.  One hostage was Wexford's wife, Dora.  Now, combining high technology with his extraordinary detecting skills, Wexford and his team race to find the kidnappers' whereabouts.  Because someone has crossed from political belief to fanaticism, and as the first body is found, good intentions may become Wexford's personal path to hell.

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:

"There is no finer mystery writer than Ruth Rendell, and she is in top form here with this meticulously crafted novel...Road Rage is British mystery at its best. "
--The San Diego Union-Tribune

"Haunting."
--Boston Herald

"A compelling tale."
--The New Yorker

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

"One of the finest practitioners of her craft in the English-speaking world...Even within the crowded, competitive and fecund world of career mystery writers, Ruth Rendell is recognized as a phenomenon."
--Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review