Portobello

Ruth Rendell is in top form in this intricately plotted and richly satisfying novel. It does feature crime, suspense, even, finally, murder, but it transcends genre; the mystery is that of human nature and its demons. A strange young man named Joel Roseman loses some money near the Portobello shops. Prosperous art dealer Eugene Wren, also strange but in an utterly different way, finds the money and attempts to return it, attracting Lance, a thoroughly amoral young grifter. Tim Curry invests Joel with a smoothly growing creepiness that fills the plot with menace, but he is equally wonderful with Wren's world and the feckless scammers of Lance's. When Lance's Cockney girlfriend, Gemma, delivers her idea of Wren's posh diction, Curry is in heaven. Me, too. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Starred review from July 26, 2010
London's Portobello Road, a street fabled for its shops and outdoor market, provides the backdrop for Edgar-winner Rendell's superlative suspense novel, which features a cast of colorful characters from varied classes and walks of life. Secretive 50-year-old Eugene Wren, who's addicted to cheap candy lozenges, is toying with marrying his longtime girlfriend, physician Ella Cotswold. Rootless Lance Platt cases the neighborhood for costly homes he can break into, and clashes with his great-uncle, Gilbert Gibson, a former burglar who now preaches the gospel. One man's losing 115 pounds triggers a series of coincidences that brings this disparate lot closer together, toward haphazard violence and death. Rendell (The Water's Lovely) is particularly adept at portraying young people just a dole check away from homelessness as well as the carelessness and callousness of the book's upper-middle-class characters. Her style has become ever more spare while retaining its subtle psychology and vivid sense of place.