Ruth Rendell: Adam and Eve Pinch Me

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Poor sad Minty with her obsessive compulsive cleaning habits and her little job in the local dry-cleaners. She had a fiance, Jock, for a short while, but he was killed in the Paddington train crash shortly after persuading her to hand over her little legacy. But why does his ghost keep coming back to haunt her?

Poor silly Zillah with her two horrible children, a falling-down cottage, no car and no job. She was married once, to Jerry, but then she got a letter saying he had been killed in the Paddington train crash. Not that she believed it. Still, she doesn't bother to go into all that when the very rich and firmly in-the-closet, gay, Conservative MP, James, proposes a marriage of convenience.

Then there is Fiona. There's nothing much to feel sorry for: she's a successful merchant banker; her life's great. Except for, maybe, the little flaw which is her loser boyfriend, Jeff, who doesn't seem to have a job and who is rather good at persuading her to hand over cash. But she loves him.

Ruth Rendell's latest reads a bit like what might happen if Fay Weldon sat down to write a thriller.

It's full of characters who are, if blameless, not particularly likeable either. Rendell is particularly good at depicting the bleakness of little lives. She takes the daily grind and imbues it with strangeness. It's like looking through the curtains, wishing you hadn't, and knowing that you're compelled to go back for just one more sneaky glimpse.

Random House

$34.95