The Waters Lovely an intensely gripping and charged psychological story of relationships built on murderous lies and hidden secrets from the award winning Queen of Crime, Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell is excellent at catatonia. She revels in the menacing potential of stillness, the sinister heft of the inanimate object. In this cool yet engrossing novel, life's miscellanea . . . threaten to unmask awful secrets. The suspense is genteel, but palpable . . . Rendell is in full control of her craft here. She places motives, possibilities, or question marks with forensic precision throughout the story . . . Impressively, she draws characters with great economy, unpicks and sustains them through a well-timed and smoothly executed story. Sunday Times

"Ruth Rendell is excellent at catatonia. She revels in the menacing potential of stillness, the sinister heft of the inanimate object. In this cool yet engrossing novel, life's miscellanea ... threaten to unmask awful secrets. The suspense is genteel, but palpable ... Rendell is in full control of her craft here. She places motives, possibilities, or question marks with forensic precision throughout the story ... Impressively, she draws characters with great economy, unpicks and sustains them through a well-timed and smoothly executed story." Sunday Times "The quality of the writing is as high as ever, and so too is Rendell's control of the narrative, which sweeps along in short, tart sections." Spectator "Rendell coaxes her horrors along so seductively that all kinds of nastiness seem not only possible, but inevitable" Literary Review "Once again, she has broken with the traditions of crime fiction, that it should engage the mind rather than the emotions" Sunday Times "Ruth Rendell is back to her creepy best. She has always been wonderful at exploring the dark corners of the human mind, and the way private fantasies can clash and explode into terrifying violence" Daily Mail