A Demon in My View [Paperback]

Ruth Rendell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 2000 | Series: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

She waits for him in the dark, her mind and body perfect, passive, until one day, when he goes to the cellar, and she is gone . . .

In A Demon in My View, Ruth Rendell creates a character as frightening as he is fascinating. Mild-mannered Arthur Johnson has never known how to talk to women. And his loneliness has perverted his desire for love and respect into a carefully controlled penchant for violence. One floor below him, a scholar finishing his thesis on psychopathic personalities is about to stumble—quite literally—upon one of Arthur's many secrets. Haunting and intelligent, A Demon in My View shows the startling results of this chilling alchemy of two very disparate minds—one pathological and the other obsessed with pathology.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Published in 1976 and 1977, respectively, these are fairly typical of Rendell's popular psychological thrillers. Demon presents a researcher studying psychopathic personalities who doesn't recognize that his seemingly shy, harmless neighbor is a total nut job. Judgement finds a police investigator trying to discern why a housekeeper slaughters her employer's entire family on Valentine's Day.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A distinguished storyteller at the very height of her powers." —Sunday Express

"Ruth Rendell is the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world." —Time

"No one can take you so totally into the recesses of the human mind as does Ruth Rendell." —The Christian Science Monitor

"If there were a craft guild for writers, I'd apprentice myself to Ruth Rendell." —Sue Grafton

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 182 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage books ed edition (January 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375704914
• ISBN-13: 978-0375704918
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #279,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing, eye opening, suspenseful page turner, November 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: A Demon in My View (Paperback)

This book won Rendell the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award for 1976 (the most important crime fiction awards in Great Britain.) And I can see why. Extremely well crafted, this book stays with you long after reading it. And you'll read it pretty quickly, because this is a tough one to put down. As a longtime Hercule Poirot/Miss Marple/Agatha Christie fan, I was so happy to discover the Inspector Wexford mysteries, and have read most of these. But this is no Wexford mystery. I was so disturbed by the subject matter, that after I read it, I put it out of sight for a while, but it never went out of mind, so be prepared. This is Rendell, one of the best mystery writers out there today, at her best.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It Knocked Me Out, March 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Demon in My View (Paperback)

This was one of the first Rendell books that I read, and it absolutely knocked me out. I was recovering from a cold, lying in bed and enjoying it nicely, when it took a turn that made me sit up straight and go, "SAY WHAT? " I forgot the cold, forgot everything but following this hypnotic tale to its strange end. I've now read it three times, and each time it got more impressive. By present standards of sex and violence, it may seem understated. Somehow, in these days of excess, that just makes it more powerful. Rendell is the empress of the accidental, the queen of chaos theory. Something tiny happens, and something else tiny happens, and somehow, inevitably, chance becomes destiny or whatever passes for it. Oh, her books are lovely, dark, and deep. Open this one up, and you'll have miles to go before you sleep.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Fine read from Rendell, April 14, 2002

By 

Ernest Joselovitz (Rockville, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Demon in My View (Paperback)

I have never read a boring book by Ruth Rendell. This one centers on a quiet and unnoticed psychopath. As she often does, Rendell places two stories side by side, and brings them together in a mind-blowing resolution. Here, the story of one man's romance with a woman married to a violent mate, and a psychopath brought to the edge by seemingly tiny cirucmstances. It may be a bit schematic - two men who coinicdentally have the same first initial and last name, a woman who leaves her violent husband just as the other story has reached a climactic crisis - but it is so much fun, so imaginative and not-quite-predictable, and such a fitting reader-revenge - that it is forgiveable.

It does seem: you can always count on Rendell.