Ruth Rendell: A Sleeping Life (UK 2010)

From the Publisher:
On a sultry August evening, the bloody body of a middle-aged woman is discovered beneath a hedge by a small boy.

There are only two things that surprise Wexford about the murder scene. One, that the only contents of the woman's handbag are some keys and a wallet containing nothing but some money. And two, how even in death, her deathly grey eyes possess a scornful glare.

The woman turns out to be Rhoda Comfrey, but there's no murder weapon, no apparent motive, and no one who actually cares she's died. Wexford's only hunch is that the clues to her murder must lie in her solitary London life. But her existence there becomes frustratingly impossible to trace.

Ruth Rendell: A Sleeping Life. A Wexford Case. Arrow, ISBN 9780099534891 (February, 2010), 272 p., £7.99.

Ruth Rendell: A Sleeping Life (USA 2000)

From the Publisher:
Rhoda Comfrey's death seemed unremarkable; the real mystery was her life.
In A Sleeping Life, master mystery writer Ruth Rendell unveils an elaborate web of lies and deception painstakingly maintained by a troubled soul. A wallet found in Comfrey's handbag leads Inspector Wexford to Mr. Grenville West, a writer whose plots revel in the blood, thunder, and passion of dramas of old; whose current whereabouts are unclear; and whose curious secretary -- the plain Polly Flinders -- provides the Inspector with more questions than answers. And when a second Grenville West comes to light, Wexford faces a dizzying array of possible scenarios -- and suspects -- behind the Comfrey murder.

Brilliantly entertaining, exceptionally crafted, A Sleeping Life evokes the dark realities, half-truths, and flights of fancy that constitute a life.

Ruth Rendell: A Sleeping Life. An Inspector Wexford Mystery. Vintage, ISBN: 0375704930 (July, 2000), 192 p., $11.00.

Ruth Rendell: A Sleeping Life (UK 1994)

From the Publisher:
With no clues as to the murdered woman's identity, all Wexford has to go on is his imagination.
The body found under the hedge was that of a middle-aged woman, biggish and gaunt. The grey eyes were wide and staring, and in them, Detective Chief Inspector Wexford thought he saw a sardonic gleam, a glare, even in death, of scorn. But that must have been his imagination, and his imagination was almost all he had to go on.

The woman was a stranger. Her handbag held little more than three keys on a ring and forty-two pounds in a new wallet. There was nothing to give him her address, her occupation or even her identity -- let alone any clues that might lead to her killer. The woman was dead but, as Wexford knew only too well, death by murder is, in a way, not an ending but a beginning.

Ruth Rendell: A Sleeping Life. An Inspector Wexford Mystery. Arrow, ISBN 0099199807 (April, 1994), 224 p., £4.99 (?).