From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Three-time Edgar Award–winner Rendell (13 Steps Down) often creates fragile characters, trembling on the edge of losing a lover, child, job, solvency or sanity. Slashing through their world is a wild card, an obsessive or a sociopath too focused on personal gain to be concerned with damage to others. The vulnerable people at the heart of this taut and enticing stand-alone are the Sealand family, particularly Heather, who's assumed to have drowned her unsavory stepfather, Guy, in the bath while he was weak with illness. A veritable pack of wild cards—including Marion Melville, who cozies up to the lonely and aged in hopes of inheriting their estates after she's poisoned them, and Marion's Dumpster-diving brother, Fowler—keeps everyone off guard. Rendell enlivens the tale with subplots involving various romances—ardent and desperate—and a killer who lurks in London's parks, as well as with pithy comments about class, technology, generational conflict, food and aesthetics. The plot twists in this electrifying read reach all the way to the last page. (July)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
In The Water's Lovely, three-time Edgar winner Ruth Rendell has written a subtle and darkly comic psychological thriller. The prolific Baroness, who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is best known for her Inspector Wexworth series (starting with 1964's From Doon With Death), but she has also produced many excellent stand-alone novels. Most reviewers wholeheartedly praised the book, describing it as "virtuosic" (Entertainment Weekly), suspenseful, and "gleefully energetic" (New York Times), with a "head-spinning finale" (Christian Science Monitor). Even the critics who felt it was not her strongest work had positive things to say about Rendell's deft observations and dry wit. Fans of the genre will not be disappointed.
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