The Keys to the Street [Hardcover]

Ruth Rendell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 20, 1996

Set in and around London's Regents Park, where the city's wealthiest, poorest, kindest, and most vicious citizens all cross paths, this newest novel by the Edgar and Gold Dagger-winning author of Crocodile Bird tells of the deadly thanks a young woman risks receiving in return for an act of selfless generosity.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Discovering Ruth Rendell late must be like discovering Mozart late: any regrets for time wasted are overwhelmed by the pleasure of having so many treats to choose from. She writes mysteries about Inspector Wexford and suspense thrillers about what happens when people's lives accidently collide. This new book falls into the thriller category: in the first few pages we meet a large group of people living in and around London's Regents Park. There are the homeless, whose hardships are added to when a murderer begins to decimate their ranks; a barely-restrained lunatic who works as a dog-walker; a drug dealer and his violent helper; and Rendell's central character, Mary Jago, a gentle young woman whose courageous charity brings her lots of trouble. The best recent Wexford mystery is Simisola; other recommended Rendells include: From Doon With Death, The Tree of Hands, An Unkindness of Ravens and The Brimstone Wedding (written under her Barbara Vine alter ego).

From Publishers Weekly

In a story that commands?and fully rewards?intense engagement from its readers, Rendell (The Crocodile Bird; Simisola) once again proves an astute, intense observer of physical and psychological detail, demonstrating that we are surrounded by people we don't see and fail to appreciate the ways in which intimates and strangers are connected to us. Housesitting in a posh home near London's Regent's Park lets Mary Jago separate from her abusive and persistent lover, whose behavior has worsened since she decided to donate bone marrow to save the life of an anonymous recipient. When she meets Leo Nash, the marrow recipient, she enters a heady courtship with the stranger whose very being is now linked to hers. While she does notice Bean, the strange little man who works as a dog walker and behaves like a "superior upper servant" in an old film, and she cheerfully finds kind words for Roman Ashton, one of the area's many "dossers," or street people, Mary little suspects how complex their histories are, what their fears and schemes might be or what they notice in return. Likewise, she is sheltered from the fears of the area's homeless as one after another is killed and then impaled on the spikes of park railings. When a crack is exposed in the edifice of Mary's new and happy life, the death lurking beneath it may be something else she never fully comprehends. With this meticulously crafted work, Rendell reminds us how complex, interconnected and fragile modern life is.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 326 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1 Amer ed edition (August 20, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517706857
• ISBN-13: 978-0517706855
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,230,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A joy to read. Yet another excellent book, August 22, 2003

By 

RachelWalker "RachelW" (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Keys to the Street (Mass Market Paperback)

This novel is rather like a symbolic microcosm of a solar system. That is the only way I can find to describe it. All that characters' lives go around in their own orbit, but occasionally they meet, those orbits cross, and each is influenced by this meeting in some way, be it good or bad, and they carry on once more, their paths forever altered slightly, or maybe not so slightly. Because this is Rendell's world, and in Rendell's world those planets don't always just cross, they collide.

The main plot, I suppose, centres on Mary Jago, a young woman living in London. Mary has donated her own bone marrow to save the lie of a stranger. This generous act of kindness lead directly to the break-up of her relationship with the despiseable Alistair, and she moves out, taking up residence in a house on the edge of Regent's Park, looking after it while the owners are on holiday. However, soon, the man whose live she has saved will alter her own life irrevocably for ever.

Inhabiting Regent's Park (which, I suppose, would be the Sun of the earlier analogy) are the dropouts, the street-people, forgotten and ignored by society, until a vicious killer starts targeting them, leaving their bodies impaled upon the railings that border the park. Rendell creates several of these misfits, the most important one, I suppose, being Roman, a man who took to the streets, leaving behind his past and possessions, when his life was shattered upon the deaths of his wife and young children in a horrific accident. He is particularly interesting.

Then there is Bean, a retired butler-turned-dog-walker who roams the park every day exercising his canine clients, who despises the tramps who take refuge there. And then, most sinister of all, there is Hob, a hopeless drug addict living nearby in a rented flat, who is prepared to carry out acts of varying violence in return for very welcome payment...

I've never read a novel quite like this before, and I doubt that I will again. It is flawless in every way. A book so astoundingly good that I have now read it three times (remarkable, considering that I am rarely even prepared to set time by to re-read a book even once). But, then, almost all Rendell's books have this effect upon me. She has a prose style like no other writer today. It is entirely without emotions, pretension, or anything else, and yet it is powerful and gripping. She doesn't fill her books with unnecessary description - but when she does do descriptions, they are like gems thrown in a buskers case - instead creating a palpable sense of atmosphere and soon-to-be-destroyed normality. She has a brilliant sense of place, making London d seem claustrophobic and terrifying, and I am almost sure that If I suddenly found myself in Regent's Park I would quicken my step distinctly through irrational and superfluous fear entirely of Rendell's creating.

The characters she creates are drawn brilliantly, and are absolutely fascinating, every single one of them, so much so that I would gladly carry on reading about them if this book were even more than thrice its length. I want to know everything about them. The way they interact, each story occasionally connecting with one another, is also fascinating, and Rendell manages to examine brilliantly notions about effects and consequences.

"The Keys to the Street" (a title of genius!) is excellent. The whole thing sparkles with darkness, and holds a subtle originality that, along with other aspects, demonstrate clearly why Ruth Rendell is to be treasured.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a beautifully written, captivating, and tragic tale, March 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Keys to the Street (Audio Cassette)

I don't understand how other reviewers could say the ending was unimaginative or 'pat"--I usually figure mysteries out and was totally shocked by this one, though it made sense in the end. I loved the different characters and was so involved in their stories, parts of which were almost too real and painful to read. Rendell touches on the scarey parts of life--the unpredictable tragedies and betrayals and losses, and how nothing is ever quite what it seems-- yet even in the midst of this pain there is love and goodness and redemption of a sort. There is also wonderful humor and such skilled, evocative writing in spots it almost takes the breath away. Her descriptions of love and passion are among the best I've ever read, as is the way she portrays pain and loss. I thought about this book a long time after I finished reading and was very affected by it. It is not the escapist or realistic reading many mystery lovers want, but it evokes emotion and is so beatifully written and says something mythic (and almost surreal) about people and life. To say Rendell does not understand young characters misses the point. Much of the criticism here seems to be is faulting literature for not being a far lesser thing. Rendell's world is not the real world but a fictional world that tells real truths. Some of the ending plot details bothered me, but the fictional dream of most of it swept me away and compelled me to keep reading.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Street people, druggies, S&M, etc., October 8, 2003

By 

Fred Camfield (Vicksburg, MS USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Keys to the Street (Hardcover)

The novel has a complex plot that moves from character to character. I would suggest that the previous reviewer should re-read the last chapter. There are a number of interwoven plots. There is Mary Jago, escaping from an abusive boyfriend, who thinks she has found a new love; Roman, victim of a tragedy, who has dropped out of life to sleep on the streets; Bean, a 70-year old ex-butler to a man who liked to be beaten, who now works as a dog walker to supplement his small pension; Hob, a druggy who earns a living as an enforcer for drug dealers; Detective Inspector Marnock, who investigates various murders that are committed; an unknown impaler who is killing street people; and an assortment of other characters plus a large number of dogs. Some people like dogs and some people don't, but be careful how you treat them because they have friends who may take revenge in unexpected ways.

The setting is the Regent Park area of London. The gates are closed at night except to residents who have keys, but various other people find their way past the gates. Several people are murdered and their bodies impaled on spiked fences, but that is just one of the plots. There is drug dealing, blackmail, muggings, and there is Mary Jago trying to escape from her ex-boyfriend and find a new life.

The plot takes some surprising twists and turns. Some people get what they deserve, but the abusive ex-boyfriend seems to walk away unscathed (except that he lost his chance with a rich heiress). Perhaps Marnock should have named the killer on the last page instead of making readers figure it out from the clues given, but that means you have to read the book carefully.