RUTH RENDELL – Master of the Moor. Pantheon, US, hardcover, 1982. UK edition: Hutchinson, hc, 1982. Paperback reprint: Ballantine, 1983.

    The English moors, with their stark, eerie loneliness, have long fascinated writers of suspense fiction. In this excellent novel of psychological suspense, Rendell utilizes this setting as the scene for a series of murders of women, and the combination of the oppressive atmosphere and the killings takes a horrible emotional toll on those living nearby.

    Until he finds the first body, Stephen Walby thinks he knows Vangmoor — considers himself, in fact, “master of the moor.” Daily he traverses its crinkle-crankle paths, up the foins (hills) and past the abandoned soughs (mine shafts).

    But on the day he finds the strangled girl’s body, his life changes. The moor, once a popular place, becomes deserted — “known not as somewhere unique and beautiful but as the place where a young girl had been killed.”

    Not altogether displeased by this, Stephen begins to visit the moor more frequently. The murders continue, and Stephen often returns from his walks in a feverish state. Occasionally he is as low as his chronically depressed father; and his already stressed marriage begins to fall apart. On top of this, other events begin to make Stephen wonder about his parentage; at times he isn’t sure who he is — or what.

    This is one of Rendell’s best novels, and even if the reader begins to suspect what is going on, he can never be sure, up to the last terrifying revelation.

    Other equally gripping tales are One Across, Two Down (1971), The Face of Trespass (1974), and A Demon in My View (1976).

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.