Summary
It is a house where three couples have lived, happily and unhappily. It is covered in green leaves shading in color to copper and red. Beneath is pale red brick. In the paved backyard is a manhole with a heavy and elaborately decorated Italianate pot planted on top. And in the depths below lies the horror of four long- dead bodies.
This is Ruth Rendell at her authoritative best, restoring retired Chief Inspector Wexford to his world of crime investigation and taking the reader with him on an expertly conducted tour of London streets and houses. Wexford is especially impressed by Georgian houses because of their diversity, their "multiplicity of bow windows and columns and arches and balconies - each one of them a surprise, ivory stucco all of them, as if carved from vanilla ice cream." Within them wait clues and crimes and unpredictable characters.See the full content of this document
Extract
Life in Retirement for the Detective
When Wexford looks at Orcadia Cottage and the secret it held in its depths, he reflects on the irony of its apparent serenity, its stillness and quiet, as though nothing had ever disturbed its peacefulness.
He im...See the full content of this document
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