Arthur Johnson doesn't look like a murderous psychopath; he is a mild-mannered man who has never known how to talk to women.

Years of loneliness has warped his mind, turning his desire for a woman's love and respect into a pathological need for carefully controlled violence. Locked in the cellar of his building is the perfect willing victim, a woman who can be murdered over and over again, a woman who waits for Arthur every night...

When a young scholar of psychopathic personalities moves in downstairs and Arthur's mannequin disappears, where will he turn to satisfy his urgent craving for violence?

The crime novel that won Rendell the first of her six Gold Dagger awards, this is a haunting insight into the mind of a pathological criminal.

Ruth Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, and will be remembered as a legend in her own lifetime. Her groundbreaking debut novel,From Doon With Death, was first published in 1964 and introduced the reader to her enduring and popular detective, Inspector Reginald Wexford, who went on to feature in twenty-four of her subsequent novels.

With worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, Rendell was a regularSunday Timesbestseller. Her sixty bestselling novels include police procedurals, some of which have been successfully adapted for TV, stand-alone psychological mysteries, and a third strand of crime novels under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. Very much abreast of her times, the Wexford books in particular often engaged with social or political issues close to her heart.

Rendell won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for 1976s best crime novel withA Demon in My View,a Gold Dagger award forLive Fleshin 1986, and theSunday TimesLiterary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

Ruth Rendell died in May 2015. Her final novel,Dark Corners, is scheduled for publication in October 2015