When World War II broke out, the young George Baker was forced to wave his Yorkshire-born father goodbye in Bulgaria and return to England with his mother, an Irish nurse. He never saw him again. The unpredictable life that followed nonetheless led to a brilliant career in acting - two Bond films, I, Claudius and notably the role of Chief Inspector Wexford in Ruth Rendell's ITV murder mysteries. After the loss of his dearly beloved wife to cancer in the 1990s, Baker married his on-screen wife Dora, actress Louie Ramsay.

From the author called the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world ("Time") comes her newest novel featuring Inspector Wexford.

The stag party was terrific. The incident that followed was terrifying. . . . “The best mystery writer anywere in the English-speaking world.”—The Boston Globe Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be a prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? But it was—and Charlie's death sentence was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Suspense is spiced with ironic twists as Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer. . . . Praise for The Best Man to Die “You cannot afford to miss Ruth Rendell!”—The New York Times Book Review “For readers who have almost given up mysteries . . . Rendell may be just the woman to get them started again.”—Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine “First-rate entertainment.”—Saturday Review

"A female Vicar named Sarah Hussein is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham Vicarage. A single-mother to a teenage girl, Hussein was a woman working in a male-dominated profession. Moreover, she was of mixed race and working to modernize the church. Could racism or sexism have played a factor in her murder? As he searches the Vicar's, Wexford sees a book containing a letter serving as a bookmark. Wexford puts it into his pocket and soon realizes his grave error - the former policeman has taken away a piece of valuable evidence without telling anybody."--

The steamer Wexford, with her flared bow, tall masts, and her open, canvas-sided hurricane deck, charmed spectators as she carried cargo across the Great Lakes. The romance and adventure of her British and French history in the South American trade followed her. Under newly appointed 24-year-old captain Bruce Cameron, her fateful final voyage was punctuated with opportunities to be saved from destruction , but his persistence in trying to make port at Goderich led to tragedy - a victim of the storm of 1913. Over a period of 87 years, she eluded many efforts to locate her remains, but was finally discovered in 2000 by a sailor using a fish-finding device. Since then, she has been visited by thousands, but sadly plundered. Our story traces her history from her British origins in 1883, through the transition to become a "Laker," the eventful storm, the search, and her ultimate discovery in southern Lake Huron, and the controversy over how she should be protected.

INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL’S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS In the stunning climax to Rendell’s classic 1998 novel A Sight for Sore Eyes, three bodies—two dead, one living—are entombed in an underground chamber beneath a picturesque London house. Twelve years later, the house’s new owner pulls back a manhole cover, and discovers the vault—and its grisly contents. Only now, the number of bodies is four. How did somebody else end up in the chamber? And who knew of its existence? With their own detectives at an impasse, London police call on former Kingsmarkham Chief Inspector Wexford, now retired and living with his wife in London, to advise them. Wexford, missing the thrill of a good case, jumps at the chance to sleuth once again. His dogged detective skills and knack for figuring out the criminal mind take him to London neighborhoods, posh and poor, as he follows a complex trail leading back to the original murders a decade ago. But just as the case gets hot, a devastating family tragedy pulls Wexford back to Kingsmarkham, and he finds himself transforming from investigator into victim. Ingeniously plotted, The Vault is a “masterful” (The Seattle Times) sequel to A Sight for Sore Eyes that will satisfy both longtime Wexford fans and new Rendell readers alike.

The twentieth book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford. A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The young woman in the car behind is spared. But only for a while... A few weeks later, George Marshalson lives every father's worst nightmare: he discovers the murdered body of his eighteen-year-old daughter on the side of the road. As a man with a strained father-daughter relationship himself, Wexford must struggle to keep his professional life as a detective separate from his personal life as husband and father. Particularly when a second teenage girl is murdered - a victim unquestionably linked to the first - and another family is shattered...