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BEST-SELLING BRITISH crime writer Ruth Rendell, who wrote over 60 books in a career spanning five decades, has died at the age of 85.
Rendell suffered a stroke in January and had been in a critical condition in hospital.
In a statement, Penguin Random House said:
“We are devastated by the loss of one of our best-loved authors.
Gail Rebuck, chair of Penguin Random House UK, said: “Ruth was much admired by the whole publishing industry for her brilliant body of work.
“An insightful and elegant observer of society, many of her award-winning thrillers and psychological murder mysteries highlighted the causes she cared so deeply about,” she said.
Rendell was best known for psychological thrillers delving into the criminal mind as well as the successful television adaptation “The Ruth Rendell Mysteries”.
Early days
Born Ruth Grasemann on February 17, 1930 she grew up in a London suburb in a family of teachers. Her mother was born in Sweden and brought up in Denmark and her father was English.
She started out as a journalist, writing feature copy for a local paper, the Chigwell Times, but was forced to resign after reportedly inventing stories.
Rendell’s fictional creation, the sensitive Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, featured in her first novel “From Doon to Death” (1964) and throughout her career.
The first published novel came almost by default — she submitted a comedy of intrigue to a publisher who did not like it and asked if she had anything else.
She gave him the manuscript of a detective Wexford story which was gathering dust in a drawer and it was published.
The detective retired in “The Vault” (2011) but she continued writing and her latest book, “The Girl Next Door”, came out in 2014.
Speaking about her most famous creation, Rendell recently explained: “I don’t get sick of him because he’s me. He’s very much me.
“He doesn’t look like me, of course, but the way he thinks and his principles and his ideas and what he likes doing, that’s me. So I think you don’t get tired of yourself,” she told the Guardian.
Political career
Seeking to avoid being typecast she also wrote suspense and psychological novels under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.
The author explained that her talent for suspense came from a studious love of literature.
“I think one looks at great fiction and sees how that is done. Think about Emma,” a novel by 19th-century author Jane Austen, she told the Guardian.
We know there’s something strange about Jane Fairfax, but it’s not until very far on that we realise that all the time she’s been engaged to Frank Churchill. There’s nothing clumsy about it, nothing appears to be contrived, and it’s done by withholding.
Rendell was appointed Baroness Rendell of Babergh by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997, on the recommendation of then prime minister Tony Blair, becoming a member of the House of Lords.
Firmly to the political left, she described herself as a “working peer”. She wrote her novels in the morning, limiting herself to four hours’ work, and in the afternoon sat in the upper house of parliament, going through draft laws and debating government policy.
She was awarded four Gold Daggers and a Diamond Dagger from England’s prestigious Crime Writers’ Association, as well as three Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America among many other accolades.
She was a close friend of fellow British crime writer P.D. James, who died in 2014 at the age of 94.
She married Don Rendell in 1953 and the two had a son. Her husband died in 1999 from prostate cancer.
Following her stroke in January, publisher Jean-Claude Berline, the French editor of her next book, said that after P.D. James’s death, Rendell was “the last grande dame of the police thriller”.
It’s possibly someone showing off their capability before putting it up for auction. Like the Christmas Sony hack a couple of years ago
Here’s why this wasn’t a nation state actor. Let’s take a look at an excerpt from the log of the Firewall on my Home Router: (IP’s truncated)
Oct 22 16:26:30: [Minor] Port Scan is detected (186.244.206.xx:15314->109.255.xx.yy:23 TCP) from module Firewall
Oct 22 16:28:07: [Minor] Port Scan is detected (83.21.5.xx:63112->109.255.xx.yy:9999 TCP) from module Firewall
Oct 22 16:28:04: [Minor] Port Scan is detected (93.171.199.xx:11943->109.255.xx.yy:23 TCP) from module Firewall
My router (and yours) is scanned thousands of times a day, looking for open ports through which they can connect to webcams, home alarm systems etc etc. Not that they want to spy on you, or steal your stuff. That’s actually quite rare. Instead they will simply turn your devices into internet weapons that will send crafted queries designed to spam other machines, anywhere else on the Net.
It’s not the Russians doing this. It’s gangs of basement dwellers and malcontents. Much ado about nothing in terms of world politics. Be more worried about your shiny new Thermostat.
State sponsored hackers are “sitting in the basement” type hackers who are just employed, plus there’s a lot more of them, what are they on about? They’re really pushing this Russia thing! There’s a few videos of Putin talking to international journalists asking them to actually do their job and report on what’s happening because the U.S. Media are out of control. It’s a sad state of affairs when you get to this stage.
@Linda: Well yes Linda, but with the additional training, education and skill-set that comes with that. They don’t spend their lives scanning Virgin media IP blocks trying to hack home devices. They don’t care about DYN (the company hit yesterday) or their customers, by and large, or perform low grade nuisance attacks in general.
Instead they are busy doing the same thing to IP blocks belonging to infrastructure and governments.
Which is why I think we agree that this was unlikely to be nation state and even if it was Russia are no more likely to be guilty than China, Iran or North Korea if it was.
We agree. I think it’s least likely to be Russia anyway, if they really thought it was them they wouldn’t say it. I mean why this story and not the one where Putin is saying he doesn’t want to get into a war with the U.S but they have to stop moving their nuclear stuff over toward him? If there’s even a chance that the U.S. is trying to start a war, shouldn’t we know this before we worry about who fiddled with Twitter? They’ve done it before and they’re at it again.
This has F-Society written all over it…
I found the discrimination against me as a kid was very prominent, as one of the few vegetarian in school, I really understood how it felt to be frowned upon for being different. Other students would shout ‘winner winner, chicken dinner’ at me when they quite clearly knew I did not eat the low grade chicken there degenerate mum’s would make them scoff on a daily basis.
@Jaque H Doyle, winner winner, chicken dinner. How do you like your steak cooked ?
Someone putin on a show of power in support of his business friend, Trump?
So the US are saying that, at the moment, the Russians are the evil superior cyber power? It could be anyone really. Their tech companies have been farming out manufacturing, data handling and coding etc to the Far East and third world for years chasing the bottom line, so it shouldn’t surprise them if they’re open to both fair and unfair competition, underground practices and even attacks from anywhere in the world. Silicon Valley has the startup and investment gig but the technology is inherently wide open to bad intentioned talent everywhere.
Jasus I hope they don’t DOS attack Eircode… Pizza consumption would grind to a halt!!!
TBH these people bore me. If this is what makes you happy in life you really need to get a life it’s so much more fun!
Us testing the internet kill switch , before martial law is declared all communications will be severed !
Can’t be Anonymous, most of their hacker’s are actually in prison or simply not good enough, so that leaves the Chinese or the Russian’s? My money’s on the commies…
Eh they’re both commies…
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