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

On a stormy February afternoon, little Stella Rivers disappeared and was never seen again. There were no clues, no demands and no traces. And there was nowhere else for Wexford and his team to...

Anita Margolis had vanished. There was no body, no crime – nothing more concrete than an anonymous letter and the intriguing name of Smith. According to headquarters, it wasn’t to be...

Messages were coming in thick and fast - messages that were never intended for John Creevey. He thought he had intercepted a major crime ring. He would never know that he was dealing with a group...

A man and his daughter lie dead after a car accident. Strangely, no other car was involved and no cause has been found. Wexford’s only option is to wait and hope that the one surviving victim,...

Chief Inspector Wexford had every reason to remember the Painter case - it was the first murder he’d ever handled on his own. There had been no mystery - Painter had done it and been hanged.

The Portobello area of West London has an edge to it. There is nothing safe about Portobello.

Eugene Wren was fifty, with prematurely white hair. He also had an addictive personality....

The man who had died was Ismay's stepfather, Guy. Nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their...

'I think you know who killed your stepfather', said Wexford. So begins this scintillating collection of long and short stories by Ruth Rendell. It was clear both to Wexford and Burden that Tom...

In a gloomy London cemetery a girl is found murdered – a girl with a name that isn’t hers, a girl with no friends, no possessions and no past. It shouldn’t have been a case for Detective...

Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury – a human hand. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped...

There hadn’t been anything like this kind of rain in living memory. The River Brede had burst its banks, and not a single house in the valley had escaped flooding. Even where Wexford lived,...

Sixteen-year-old Elvira's mother is dead. Elvira is sad, of course, but not as sad as her younger sister, Spinny. Spinny is afraid their father, Luke, will be heartbroken, but Elvira knows better...

Sir Manuel Carmargue, one of the greatest flautists of his time, was dead. Misadventure: an old man, ankle-deep in snow, he lost his foothold in the dark, slipping into the water to be trapped...

The Nightingales were always a very happy couple. But someone had reason to quarrel with Elizabeth. Someone who was alone with her in the woods on a dark September night. Someone who loved or...