Benet Archdale's erratic mother Mapsa casts Benet, her baby son James, Carol Stratford, another young single mother, and her son into a maelstrom of kidnapping, fraud, family violence, and death
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, who also wrote under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, was an acclaimed English crime writer, known for her many psychological thrillers and murder mysteries and above all for Inspector Wexford.