Adam And Eve And Pinch Me: a superbly chilling psychological thriller from the award-winning queen of crime, Ruth Rendell

By Ruth Rendell

Book Overview

Minty's boyfriend, Jock, was killed in the disastrous train wreck at Paddington, shortly after he borrowed all her savings. Now he has come back to haunt her. Zillah lost her estranged husband, Jerry,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0099426196
• ISBN13: 9780099426196
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Arrow
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Another delicious Rendell

Because Ruth Rendell's last few outings have been vaguely disappointing, I approached this most recent book with a little reluctance if not outright trepidation. In fact, it sat in my bedside book pile far longer than a Rendell would usually have done in the past. But I needn't have feared...she's back in form and this is an absolutely fascinating character study of men and women and need and manipulation. There are several main characters here whose lives intertwine most unusually, and it is hard to decide who is the best-written of these. They all spring to life with their own unique collections of human foibles and motivations and they are all on a collision course, each with the other. You can see the train wreck coming, but you can't avert your eyes.

Rendell certainly isn't mellowing with age!

This is another absolute winner from Ruth Rendell, my favourite novelist of all time. Of all her books, this is possibly her very very best. It is an amazing portrait of damaged characters forced into dangerous situations, the results of which can only be a tragedy. She displays the catastrohpic inevitability of events already set in motion with a depressing and disturbing reality. It is unsetlling to think that already our lives could be on course for a crash, by perhaps being set to meet a character similar to those in her books...those characters whose smallest actiosn can bring their own worlds, and the worlds od those around them, falling to the ground. She describes contemporary life excellently, and she draws her characters perfectly. Their downright weirdness is entirely realistic, which comes as a surprise, and a pleasure, as many authors are not able to write authentically and realisticaly about the kinds of characters that Rendell does. The plot is complex, and at the end she draws all the strands tightly together with the ability of the seasoned and consumate professional that she is. It's a thrilling and entirely suspenseful book, the type of suspense that only Rendell seems capable of creating, via the slow yet enthralling unravelling of her plots. The addition of aspects of the supernatural into the plot only add another layer of chilliness and strangeness to this brilliant book. The mystery and supernatural threads compliment each other incredibly well. The climax is understated and shocking, leaving us, as do all the best books, wanting to know more about the characters and what is to happen to them.It is also written so well that it should please not just any fan of Rendell, or just any kind of crime fiction, but anyone interested in more "literary" fiction. Rendell has deserved the Booker prize for many of her books, this one is no exception, and it is a great injustice that she will not get it. I long for the day when the literary world recognises the true talent of Ruth Rendell.

Gripping

Jerry Leach makes his living victimizing women. A true sociopath, he leads them on, sucks them dry and then leaves them. At the beginning of the novel, he is married to Zillah, engaged to Fiona, and has just recently left Minty. Minty is not too well balanced to begin with, she seems to have some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. When Jock (as she knows him)leaves her, taking her life savings, she begins to see and hear ghosts. Jock is among these, he sent her a letter saying that he had died in a train crash. He also sent one to his wife, who takes the opportunity to remarry, to a gay MP in need of a cover. In return, she gets the security that she has always wanted for herself and her two children. Minty sees what she thinks is Jock's ghost in a movie theater one night and stabs him to death. Fiona is heartbroken, and inadvertantly steers the police in her neighbor's direction. Matthew is a writer who suffers from anorexia and writes a column and hosts a TV show on the subject. His wife Michelle is a morbidly obese woman, obsessed with bringing her husband back to health. They both saw Jeff(the name he gave himself here) for what he was and disliked him. Natalie, another old flame of Jeff's, is a journalist who sees this all as the story that will bring her fame.The author deftly intertwines all of these women and their stories. It is amazing just how much damage one cad can cause. He seems to pick damaged people and preys on their weaknesses, and there are a great many to be found her. Obsessive-compulsives, codependents, anorectics, schizophrenia, sociopaths, it seems to be a veritable abnormal psych textbook. I had a hard time putting this one down to even eat or sleep. Facinating.

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

This psycho-thriller tells the story of three women and their connection to a charming con man, Jerry/Jeff/Jock, who lives off women, then disappears and moves on to his next victim. Jerry becomes a victim himself when he is stabbed to death in a movie theater. The stories of the three women, and some supporting characters, are woven together. There is just the right mix of characters, some rather endearingly peculiar, to make the book interesting. This book holds the reader's interest from the beginning to the end. It is one of Rendell's best books.

Her best ever. so it must be pretty damn excellent.

I have read every single book Ruth Rendell has ever read. Including the Inspector Wexford series, over which i hold no shame about the fact that i don't like them half as much as her psychological thrillers. And this book is the reason why. Personally, i believe that every sane person should read this book. Rendell is a stunning writer, and the way she mixes contemporay issues and events into the storyline makes the book so realistic, and so so chilling. The way she makes references to recent films, newscasters, and a whole other variety of real things which have actually happened is superb. She mixes sharp bits of non-fiction into thickly plotted fiction, and it comes out as more realistic than it might have been had she not. The plot to this one is the best one she has come up with yet. i shan't just give a synopsis of it like some reviews do, i really don't need to read a synopsis of a book when i'm trying to find a review, so i'm sur eyou don't either. But just rest assure,s the plot here is a cracker. She weaves brilliantly the supernatural themes into that of the real life psychology, and it works oh so well. IF she were a lesser writing, the supernatural and the detective side of it would both cancel each other out, but here she mixes each side with great sucess, creating a psychologically gripping novel which you just cannot put down. Rendell is the only writer who can ever really chill/disturb me. Her psychology is so accurate, and the weird disturbed characters made to seem to real. It is frightening to think that people like that could really be living next door to you, living in your street, on your train as you go to work, on the bus with you, in the cinema with you, in the supermarket with you, ahead of you in the queue. That is yet another of her major strengths. She creates a chilling and disturbing book just by using realism and accurate psychology. It's all very subtle. She is also excellent at the hoplessness many of her plots convey. the sense of the inevitable, the sense of the train heading toward another on the same rails, and an immiment collision which cannot be stopped. Things are going nice and slowly, events pannining out nicely, until all at once they crash together with devastating consequences for all involved. Rendell's subsidiary characters are all great too. there are a particularly great "little and large" couple, who create a nice light break at times of high tension. There are very few characters to like in this book, which may be it's only downside, however, a strength is that even though i didn't lke them, i still cared about what happened to them, and really really wanted to know more about their lives once the book finished. (Tami Hoag is an excellent author if you like feeling that sort of thing.) I was sad to put this book down, as i had waited so long for it. Two years since A Sight for Sore Eyes. I didn't think she could improve on that, but she has. This is a winning book, and it is clear that Rendell