Unequivocally, the most brilliant mystery writer of our time. She magnificently triumphs in a style that is uniquely hers and mesmerising -- Patricia Cornwell

Ruth Rendell is a marvel, and in the latest Inspector Wexford mystery she's on cracking form . . . The book's pacing is perfect. It starts gently as we, like Wexford, enjoy his new life of leisure. But once he puts his formidable brain to work, the violence kicks in. The result is a total page-turner - and one of Rendell's very, very best novels. -- A.N. Wilson ― Reader's Digest

The Vault sees Rendell for the first time marry the two genres she is master of: the psychological thriller and the police whodunit . . . With 60 novels put to page and still counting, Rendell will soon match the prolific output of Agatha Christie - who penned 66 works. It's hard to imagine where the inspiration comes from, but find it she does - and there's not a clue out of place or a shoehorned plotline in sight. ― Time Out

Ruth Rendell is bidding fair to join Defoe and Dickens in creating one of the great criminal cities of literature. Her view of London is a similar murderous topography, less squalid, but with the same tentacles reaching out between rich and poor . . . This mystery is also an enormously enjoyable panorama of London and a hymn of love to its Georgian houses . . . She, and Wexford are the sharpest modern observers of the "Great Wen" ― Independent

The Vault, as a sort-of-sequel is a bold attempt to combine Rendell's two chosen specialties: the police procedural and the psychological thriller. No one hides the clues better than her; no one else creates such a pervasive atmosphere of almost comic disgust and dread. The act of cross pollination proves most fruitful and triumphantly demonstrates that a vault, in addition to being an underground chamber, can also be a leap of imagination. ― Evening Standard

Ruth Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, and will be remembered as a legend in her own lifetime. Her groundbreaking debut novel, From Doon With Death, was first published in 1964 and introduced the reader to her enduring and popular detective, Inspector Reginald Wexford, who went on to feature in twenty-four of her subsequent novels.

With worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, Rendell was a regular Sunday Times bestseller. Her sixty bestselling novels include police procedurals, some of which have been successfully adapted for TV, stand-alone psychological mysteries, and a third strand of crime novels under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. Very much abreast of her times, the Wexford books in particular often engaged with social or political issues close to her heart.

Rendell won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for 1976’s best crime novel with A Demon in My View, a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986, and the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

Ruth Rendell died in May 2015. Her final novel, Dark Corners, was published in October 2015.