The Monster in the Box
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- €3.99
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- €3.99
Publisher Description
The twenty-second book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford.
Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never again set eyes on Eric Targo's short, muscular figure. And yet there he was, back in Kingsmarkham, still with that cocky, strutting walk.
Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, a woman called Elsie Carroll had been found strangled in her bedroom. Although many still had their suspicions that her husband was guilty of her violent murder, no one was convicted.
Another woman was strangled shortly afterwards, and every personal and professional instinct told Wexford that the killer was still at large. And that it was Eric Targo. A psychopathic murderer who would kill again...
As the Chief Inspector investigates a new case, Ruth Rendell looks back to the beginning of Wexford's career as a detective, even to his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. The villainous Targo is not the only ghost from Wexford's past who has re-emerged to haunt him in the here and now...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Edgar-winner Rendell's 22nd Inspector Wexford novel (after 2007's Not in the Flesh), the British police detective confronts a man from his past, Eric Targo, who he suspects is guilty of multiple murders. Years earlier, Targo stalked and taunted Wexford, daring him to press charges. A squat, creepy bully with a purple birthmark disfiguring his neck, Targo has graduated from smalltime thug to prosperous businessman, ensconced in a nouveau-riche spread complete with private zoo and lion in Kingsmarkham. When Targo apparently commits a murder affecting Wexford's own family, the inspector must re-examine how Targo consistently outsmarts the law. The meeting and mating of Wexford and his wife, Dora, also figure in the backward-looking action. While the reminiscing dilutes some of the suspense, Rendell easily outdistances most mystery writers with her complex characters and her poetic yet astringent style.
