The Girl Next Door

A Novel

By: Ruth Rendell

Narrated by: Ric Jerrom

INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL’S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS

From crime legend Ruth Rendell, a psychologically intriguing novel about an old murder that sends shockwaves across a group of astonishingly carnal and appetiteful elderly friends: “Refined, probing, and intelligent…never less than a pleasure” (USA TODAY).

In the waning months of the second World War, a group of children discover a tunnel in their neighborhood outside London. For that summer of 1944, the subterranean space becomes their “secret garden,” where the friends play games, tell their fortunes, and perform for each other.

Six decades later, construction workers make a grisly discovery beneath a house on the same land: a tin box containing two skeletal hands, one male and one female. As the hands make national news, the friends come together once again, to recall their long ago days for a detective. Then the police investigation sputters, and the threads holding their friendship together begin to unravel. Is the truth buried amid the tangled relationships of these aging men and women and their memories? Will it emerge before it’s too late?

Stephen King says, “no one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability, and malignant coincidence.” In The Girl Next Door—“yet another gem” (The Washington Post)—Rendell brilliantly shows that the choices people make, and the emotions behind them, remain as potent in late life as they were in youth. “Rendell’s wit, always mordant, has never been sharper than when she skewers patronizing assumptions about the elderly” (Chicago Tribune).

Oddly good

Not really much of a mystery in her usual way but actually pretty compelling story of an elderly group of friends. Loved the development of Rosemary.

ANOTHER EXCELLENT RENDELL NOVEL

It's a love story, it's a mystery with a twist, it's good. Rendell always gives the annoying people a good kick, I like that.

If you're a fan, don't miss this one.

Not the same as printed edition

I enjoyed this performance but I did notice a few ‘errors’: missing phrases or inserted sentences. If you’re a Rendell purist you may want to stick to the printed edition and perhaps try to read a copy from the original publisher.

Kept unfolding more twists and turns

This was one of the best Ruth Rendell mysteries I have read (of many). Somehow, even though you know both the crime and the culprit from the first chapter, the unveiling of the lives of all the senior citizens affected dozens of years after the event is absorbing. While things are tied up more or less neatly at the end, you will not find what you thought will happen has happened. Rendell gets the reader into the psyche of several characters who met as children during WWII, and how life has warped or injured them, and how they have survived when they all re-meet much later in life. While you don't necessarily like the characters, Rendell has made you care about what they will do. Really enjoyed this long book, and as ever, the map of London in front of you always helps with Rendell's excellent evocation of scenery.

Interesting characters and good listen

Would you listen to The Girl Next Door again? Why?

Thought the overall story was interesting and the character development paid off towards the end of the book.