A Demon in My View (Signed)

Ruth Rendell

ISBN 10: 0091261007 / ISBN 13: 9780091261009

Published by Hutchinson, London, 1976

About this Item

From the publisher: In 1976 this acclaimed novel by Ruth Rendell was the winner of the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award. In a gloomy cellar, the figure of a palely beautiful woman makes no move when the man advances on her from the shadows, puts his hands around her neck and strangles her. Two men rent flats in the same house, but their paths rarely cross. Arthur Johnson is quiet, 50 and a bachelor. No one knows of the dark lusts that bind Arthur to the pale lady in the cellar, that compel him to kill again and again. Anthony Johnson is a young student studying psychopathic tendencies, going to lectures and writing a thesis. His lover is trying to make up her mind whether she wants to stay with her husband or leave him to be with Anthony. This copy is near fine in black cloth with gilt titles on the spine. The book is excellent but for the age toning on the text, which happens to be common for this particular edition. No other marks or damage. The unclipped DJ is also excellent, with just the slightest edge wear. Signed by the author on the title page. As an early Rendell title, it is quite scarce signed. . EB20.

Seller Inventory # B1084

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Demon in My View (Signed)
• Publisher: Hutchinson, London
• Publication Date: 1976
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0091261007
• ISBN 13: 9780091261009
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed
• Seller catalogs:
  • Signed/Inscribed
  • Mystery
  • Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

Her white face, beautiful, unmarked by an flaw of skin or feature, stared blankly back at him. He didn’t speak. He had never known how to talk to women. There was only one thing he had ever been able to do to women and, smiling, he did it.

Then, when it was all over, he straightened her against the wall so that she would be ready to die for him again. It was the best thing in his life, just knowing she was there, waiting until the next time. But one day she wasn’t there waiting. . .


From the Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

She waits for him in the dark, her mind and body perfect, passive, until one day, when he goes to the cellar, and she is gone . . .
In A Demon in My View, Ruth Rendell creates a character as frightening as he is fascinating. Mild-mannered Arthur Johnson has never known how to talk to women. And his loneliness has perverted his desire for love and respect into a carefully controlled penchant for violence. One floor below him, a scholar finishing his thesis on psychopathic personalities is about to stumble--quite literally--upon one of Arthur's many secrets. Haunting and intelligent, A Demon in My View shows the startling results of this chilling alchemy of two very disparate minds--one pathological and the other obsessed with pathology.