The Veiled One
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3.8 • 6 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The fourteenth book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford.
Concealed by a shroud of dirty brown velvet, looking like a heap of rags, the woman's dead body lay between a silver Escort and a dark-blue Lancia.
In the desolate shopping centre car park, Wexford has been too preoccupied to notice anything out of the ordinary - only the teenage girl in the red car, driving past him rather too fast. It was Burden who called him at home with the grim news later that evening: the woman had been attacked from behind, perhaps with a thin length of wire.
But before Wexford can delve any deeper into this curious murder, he, too, faces death... Can Burden solve this mysterious crime without the help of his worldly Chief Inspector?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rendell's reputation for literary grace, ingenious plots and arresting characters is borne out again in her latest stunning mystery. Surprises abound in the case that bedevils Inspector Wexford and his partner, Mike Burden. When elderly Gwen Robson is found murdered in a shopping-mall garage, suspicion falls on Clifford, the neurotic son of widowed Dorothy Sanders, who reports the crime. At the same time, a bomb destroys Wexford's house and wounds him, leaving Burden temporarily in charge of the investigation. Later, the two detectives join forces again, but Wexford is partly distracted by worries about his actress daughter Sheila, threatened because he has protested publicly against nuclear arms. The chief inspector's psychological insights make him doubt Burden's conviction of Clifford's guilt. Wexford's questioning of the victim's family and the suspect's neighbor, along with some careful study of the agony column in a magazineamong other peculiar sourcesleads him to the truth. It's a spellbinder.
