It’s the mid-1970s, Northwest London, and an old town house has been divided up into bedsits and small flats. In one of the flats lives Arthur Johnson, a dull middle-aged bookkeeper. A repressed and socially awkward man, who never learnt how to talk to women, he hides a darker and violent side, but he keeps it in check by strangling the “woman” hidden in the house’s cellar. Then Anthony Johnson, a doctoral psychology student in his early twenties, who accidentally shares the same surname, moves into one of the house’s bedsits. These two men’s lives collide as Anthony literally unearths Arthur’s secrets.

This novel is Ruth Rendell at her best. The plot is seen from the point of view of Arthur Johnson and Anthony Johnson, but the other characters who populate the lodging house are just as lonely and dysfunctional as Arthur Johnson, yet their lives are desperate in different ways. But it is Anthony Johnson, in his innocent and almost naive way, who changes the equilibrium of Arthur Johnson’s life, causing things to spiral out of control and leading to violence and murder, in a dark plot that Rendell handles all too well.

Here she captures the dark and grubby life of mid-1970s London; a world of corner shops, self-service laundrettes, overflowing dust bins and lack of amenities. What Rendell captures even more is the inner workings of a psychopath. Not just why this man wants to and feels he needs to kill, but also the childhood sadism that led to the development of his psychopath personality. She seems to know this far too well.

This novel has a theme that Rendell would return to in many different ways in other novels, an innocent person accidentally and unwittingly setting off a chain of events that will lead to tragedy, but it is still a shockingly original novel with an unnerving portrayal of a psychopath. A novel to be read at least with the doors locked, if not the lights left on too.

Find it here on Amazon