The Rottweiler (Signed 1st)

From The Guardian: Ruth Rendell has always excelled at creating a sense of place. In her latest novel, The Rottweiler, she focuses on a single house near Paddington Station, where the owner of an antiques shop supplements her income by taking in tenants. Rendell revels in showing how the city has changed in terms of race, class and wealth, and Inez Ferry's house in Star Street seems intended as a microcosm of contemporary London. Inez is the widow of an actor who played a TV cop, a lonely woman who spends her evenings watching videos of her dead husband. The tenants and her assistant in the shop, Zeinab, are a surrogate family. They include Jeremy Quick, a computer expert who lives on the top floor; Ludmila Gogol and Freddy Perfect, the ill-matched couple in the middle; and young Will Cobbett, who looks like David Beckham but has learning difficulties. Because she needs their rent and their company, Inez cannot inquire too closely into the stories they tell her, even though Ludmila's Russian accent is obviously fake and Zeinab is stringing along two rich men she does not intend to marry. The novel is about the accommodations people make to survive, and Rendell is hardly more judgmental about her characters than Inez is. But then their lives are disrupted by a serial killer nicknamed the Rottweiler, whose latest victim is discovered near the shop. This copy is fine in black cloth with gilt titles on the spine. No marks or damage at all. The unclipped DJ is also excellent. Signed by Rendell on the title page. . AB20.…