Ruth Rendell was best known for her crime novels featuring Chief Inspector Wexford. Less well known is that the author was born in South Woodford. Emily Allen explores the life of our local queen of crime
Cosy crime and detective fiction is well and truly having a moment, with whodunnits by authors such as Richard Osman, Reverend Richard Coles and Janice Hallett selling by the millions. Yet, local lovers of crime fiction don’t have to look too far from home for a nearby link to the genre, as one of the 20th century’s most prolific crime fiction writers was born right on our doorstep.
Ruth Rendell, née Grasemann, was born in South Woodford in 1930. Both her parents were teachers and she attended the County High School for Girls. After leaving school, she worked as a feature writer for the Chigwell Times, but was forced to resign after reporting on a local sports club dinner she hadn’t actually attended, and was therefore unaware that the after-dinner speaker had died midway through his speech!
Following her marriage to Don Rendell, a reporter whom she met when they were both covering an inquest, and the birth of their son Simon three years later, Ruth set out to try her hand at fiction. Over the next few years, she wrote six crime novels, all of which were rejected by publishers. Her seventh, From Doon with Death, was accepted by John Long Publishing House and published in 1964, for which she received £75. Ruth’s inaugural novel also marks the first appearance of the popular character for whom she is perhaps best remembered: Chief Inspector Wexford.
Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford lives in the fictional town of Kingsmarkham, Sussex, and solves the uncharacteristically high number of murders that befall the village. Over the next 50 years, Ruth published 24 Inspector Wexford novels; the final title in the series, No Man’s Nightingale, was published in 2012, and sees Chief Inspector Wexford retired and acting as a police consultant. The novels’ rural village setting, clever plots and surprise endings have drawn parallels with Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple and Dorothy L Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey novels.
Ruth also published standalone psychological crime novels and thrillers to much acclaim, some under the pen name Barbara Vine, including A Judgement in Stone (1977) and A Sight for Sore Eyes (1998), and she set the last novel published in her lifetime, The Girl Next Door (2014), in Loughton.
Ruth died in May 2015, only six months after the death of fellow crime writer PD James. The Ruth Rendell Award was introduced in 2016 by the National Literacy Trust and honours authors whose work influences and champions children’s literacy. Ruth’s novels, in particular her Inspector Wexford series, are some of the earliest works in today’s incredibly popular crime fiction category. So, the next time you curl up with a crime novel, you can be proud that a forerunner of this much-loved genre was one of South Woodford’s own.
Emily Allen is a freelance writer. For more information, visit swvg.co.uk/allen
