The appearance of any novel by Ruth Rendell is a cause for celebration. But I am particularly pleased by A Sleeping Life … because it sees the return of Chief Inspector Wexford, investigating, this time, the unfathomable death of an apparently respectable, well-heeled, middle-aged woman who appears, once the investigation has begun, to have had no past and, indeed, no existence. The resolution is a little disappointing and rather obvious (the same trick was used years ago by Josephine Tey in To Love And Be Wise …) but that, to me, is little when weighed against the greater humour and humanity that Wexford produces in his creator: I can do with a rest from Mrs Rendell's grimmer (though brilliant) recent forays into criminal psychopathology.

Patrick Cosgrave, in a review of "A Sleeping Life," in The Spectator (© 1978 by The Spectator; reprinted by permission of The Spectator), Vol. 241, No. 7833, August 19, 1978, p. 22.