Tribute: Ruth Rendell

The Leonard Lopate Show | May 6, 2015

The world of carefully plotted mystery novels has lost another key practitioner of the genre: Baroness Rendell of Babergh, otherwise known as Ruth Rendell. Though 85, she had had no plans of retiring, as she stated in 2013, “I couldn’t do that. I’ll do it until I die!” She called her Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford an “alter ego.” And crime writer Simon Brett gave a telling impression of one of her speeches recently – “…she was mesmerizing. Although it was always quite spooky, because she was so affable in person, and yet you knew she could summon up dark places in her mind.” You can hear one of her interviews with Leonard from 2005 here.

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