A great writer, a proud mother and loyal friend
TRIBUTES TO CRIME WRITER RUTH RENDELL AFTER DEATH AGED 85
BEST-SELLING crime writer Ruth Rendell died yesterday aged 85.
The hugely popular author and Labour life peer had never fully recovered from a serious stroke she suffered in January.
Labour leader Ed Miliband led tributes yesterday saying: “Ruth Rendell was an outstanding and hugely popular figure in British literature and, for the last 18 years, served the Labour Party in the House of Lords with great loyalty and passion.”
Stephen King tweeted that her death was “a huge loss”. Fellow crime writer Ian Rankin tweeted: “Terrible terrible news.”
Author Jeanette Winterson, a friend of Rendell’s, said she was “a major force in lifting crime-writing out of airport genre fiction and into mainstream literature”.
Rendell was best known for her detective novels featuring Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, which were made into a hugely popular TV series starring George Baker alongside Christopher Ravenscroft as sidekick Det Insp Mike Burden. She also wrote psychological crime thrillers under the pen name Barbara Vine.
Announcing her death, her publisher Hutchinson – part of the Penguin Random House group – said: “We are devastated by the loss of one of our bestloved authors. Ruth was very much part of our publishing family and a friend to many at Penguin Random House.”
Gail Rebuck, chairwoman of Penguin Random House UK, said: “Ruth was much admired by the whole publishing industry for her brilliant body of work. Ruth was a great writer, a campaigner for social justice, a proud mother and grandmother, a generous and loyal friend and probably the best-read person I’ve ever met.
“Her many close friends in publishing and the House of Lords will greatly miss her wonderful company and her truly unique contribution to our lives.”
With more than 60 titles to her name, Rendell’s last book was The Girl Next Door, which came out last year.
PROLIFIC
Wexford has appeared in more than 20 novels, the last of which, No Man’s Nightingale, came out in 2013. The prolific writer had recently finished work on a new novel, to be published in the autumn.
She was born Ruth Barbara Grasemann in 1930 in South Woodford, east London.
She was a reporter on the Chigwell Times in Essex but turned to writing fiction after filing a report on a tennis club dinner without attending – missing the big story of the after-dinner speaker dying half-way through his speech.
She married fellow former journalist Don Rendell when she was 20. They divorced in 1975 but wed again two years later. Don died from prostate cancer in 1999.
She got her first £75 publishing deal from Hutchinson after around 10 years as a housewife.
In 1996 she was awarded a CBE and became a life peer in 1997.
She passed away in London at 8am yesterday morning leaving a son, Simon.