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The Vault

The Vault

The twenty-third Wexford novel published by Hutchinson in

I was sitting in the room where there are a lot of books and I saw the various titles of mine and I saw A Sight for Sore Eyes. I thought well, you could do a sequel to that. It’s not a Wexford, of course. But it could be — it is as if Wexford walks into some sort of fantasy land, in a way. And I thought, well, why not have Wexford called in to do it?

—Ruth Rendell 1

Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. He and his wife, Dora, now divide their time between Kingsmarkham, and a coach house in Hampstead, belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila.

Wexford takes great pleasure in his books, but for all the benefits of a more relaxed lifestyle, he misses being the hand of the law. A chance meeting with an old acquaintance in a London street changes everything. Tom Ede is now a Detective Superintendent and is keen to recruit Wexford as an adviser on a difficult case.

The bodies of two women and a man have been discovered in the old coal hole of an attractive house in St John’s Wood. There is no identification, but the man’s jacket pockets contain jewellery worth £40,000.

Wexford is intrigued and excited by the challenge but unaware that this new investigative role will bring him into extreme physical danger.

Notes

Contemporary Reads 2

Footnotes

  1. In conversation with Charles Taylor, Barnes and Noble 2011. ↩︎

  2. Book links may earn this site a small commission. ↩︎