Ruth Rendell

British writer of crime and psychological thrillers; an award-winner on both sides of the Atlantic. A former journalist, she built a name as one of the best and most successful of the crime novelists. Her novel "A Demon in my View" was awarded the gold Dagger Award by the British Crime Writers Association. Her work also includes "A Sleeping Life," "The Best Way to Die," and "A New Lease on Death." In 2013 she published her 24th and last Wexford mystery, "No Man's Nightingale." Altogether, she wrote more than sixty novels, three novellas, and nine short story collections.

The only child of two teachers, Rendell grew up in a bickering world that she shut out, withdrawing into the world of imagination that holds both enchantment and the dark recesses of the psyche. She married Don Rendell; one son; they separated in 1972, divorced in 1975 and remarried in 1977, living in a pink farmhouse in the English countryside. She wrote at times under the name Barbara Vine.

Ruth Rendell died in London at 8 a.m. on 2 May 2015, having suffered a stroke the previous January.