Author:Ruth Rendell
From multi-million copy and SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Ruth Rendell, this is a darkly humorous and piercing observation of human behaviour. Fans of PD James, Ann Cleeves and Donna Leon will love this compelling fable of our lives and our crimes...
'Rendell's greatest trick is making an unforeseen outcome feel predestined' -- Financial Times
'Throroughly gripping . . . As always with Rendell, it's the exquisite human and social minutiae that count' -- The Times
'Rendell does it again!' -- ***** Reader review
'Utterly gripping' -- ***** Reader review
'Unputdownable' -- ***** Reader review
'Absorbing' -- ***** Reader review
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When Stuart Font decides to throw a house-warming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building and, after some deliberation, even includes the unpleasant caretaker and his wife.
Although there are some genuine friends on the list, they are a disparate group of people and he definitely does not want to include his girlfriend, Claudia, as that might involve asking her husband.
The party will be one everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons.
Living opposite, in reclusive isolation, is a beautiful young Asian woman, christened Tigerlily by Stuart. As though from some strange urban fairytale, she emerges to exert a terrible spell on Stuart and his guests...
The sins and self-deprecations of the inhabitants of a mansion block in north-west London are skewered with great skill in a novel that incorporates adultery, dipsomania, theft, paedophilia, drugs and, inevitably, murder. A clever whodunit most notable for its naked misanthropy
—— Evening StandardRuth Rendell keeps up an amazingly high standard . . . utterly gripping
—— A.N. WilsonOnce her characters start twisting on ever-tightening tracks, their fates are brilliantly sealed, and it's never obvious who'll be the victim or the culprit. Rendell's greatest trick is making an unforeseen outcome feel predestined
—— Financial TimesThroroughly gripping . . . As always with Rendell, it's the exquisite human and social minutiae that count
—— The TimesRuth Rendell has few rivals as a chronicler of everyday life
—— Sunday TimesA thrilling exercise in horrid laughter
—— Evening StandardDon Winslow's best book yet
—— Janet Evanovich...a thoughtful, prescient satire on the war on drugs, packed with neat twists and funny-horrid set pieces. The characters stay with you, too
—— GuardianSavages [. . .] is both a gripping heist story, and a remarkably astute history of organised crime in Orange County, from the 1960s to the present.
—— Guy Adams , Independent