About the Author

Since her first novel, From Doon with Death, published in 1964, Ruth Rendell has won many awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for 1976's best crime novel for A Demon in My View, and the Arts Council National Book Award, genre fiction, for The Lake of Darkness in 1980.

In 1985, Ruth Rendell received the Silver Dagger for The Tree of Hands, and in 1987, writing as Barbara Vine, won her third Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for A Dark-Adapted Eye.

She won the Gold Dagger for Live Flesh in 1986 and, as Barbara Vine, for A Fatal Inversion in 1987 and for King Solomon's Carpet in 1991.

Ruth Rendell won the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990, and in 1991 she was awarded the Crime Writers' Assocation Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE, and in 1997 was made a Life Peer.

Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages.

Ruth Rendell has a son and two grandsons, and lives in London.