Ruth Rendell has in recent years established herself as a major force in modern detective fiction, having won such prestigious awards as the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the Current Crime Silver Cup for the best crime novel, and the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger Award (twice). Although all of her nearly thirty novels display the intricacies of plot characteristic of the genre, Rendell has brought to it a sophisticated emphasis on both the psychology of the criminal mind and the psychology of those who are committed to justice, as well as an attentiveness to contemporary British life. Rendell's own keen interest in things literary is also apparent in her graceful style, her penchant for literary allusions (which Robert Barnard, who talks about her "storyteller's gift," calls "the dreaded quotation habit"), and her attention to the place of language and books within her...