Queen of crime fiction Ruth Rendell dies after suffering stroke
Former journalist was best known for thrillers that delved into the criminal mind
Best-selling British crime writer Ruth Rendell, who wrote over 60 books in a career spanning five decades, died yesterday at the age of 85.
Rendell - who also wrote under the pseudonym Barbara Vine - suffered a stroke in January and had been in a critical condition in hospital ever since.
She was described as "the last grande dame of the police thriller" after the death of her friend and fellow British crime-writing legend P D James last year.
Rendell was best known for thrillers that delved into the criminal mind as well as the long-running television series based on her work, .
Gail Rebuck, chair of her publisher, Penguin Random House, described her as "an insightful and elegant observer of society, many of her award-winning thrillers and psychological murder mysteries highlighted the causes she cared so deeply about."
Her best-known fictional creation, the sensitive Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, featured in her first novel (1964) and was a constant character in her work until she retired him in in 2011.
"I don't get sick of him because he's me. He's very much me," Rendell told newspaper not long before she fell ill.
"He doesn't look like me, of course, but the way he thinks and his principles and his ideas and what he likes doing, that's me. So I think you don't get tired of yourself."
Rendell started out as a journalist, writing features for a local paper near London, the , but was forced to resign after reportedly inventing stories.
Her first published novel came about almost by default - she submitted a comedy of intrigue to a publisher who did not like it and asked if she had anything else. So she gave him the manuscript of a Wexford detective story which was gathering dust in a drawer and it was published.
Firmly on the left, she was a major donor to Britain's Labour party and was made a life peer in 1997 by former prime minister Tony Blair and become known as Baroness Rendell of Babergh.
