Ruth Rendell - Long may she reign
Alyssa McDonald
From: The Australian
July 31, 2010 

 Ruth Rendell. Picture - Nathan Edwards Source: The Australian

At 80, crime queen Ruth Rendell is still writing the books that have brought her fame, fortune and a baronetcy
RUTH Rendell isn't sure when she gave her first interview. Perhaps 40 years ago, she thinks; about the same time she first autographed a book for a member of royalty. She wasn't quite sure what to put in the novel for the then-Dutch queen, Juliana. But she has since learned that "when it is British royals, you simply write, 'with my humble duty' ".
With 80 years and more than 70 novels under her belt, Rendell is as much of a British institution as the only marginally better-known octogenarian living in Buckingham Palace, and one with considerably more steel and style. She is notoriously self-disciplined, spending each morning at her computer, writing the phenomenally successful crime fiction and mystery novels that she publishes under her own name and under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. Afternoons are spent in the House of Lords, where she sits as Baroness Rendell, a Labour Party peer. And it is clear when she opens the door of her north London home, immaculate in coral linen and remarkably trim, that Rendell finds time to look after her appearance, too.

Her novels take place in a world as traditionally British as her clipped accent, a sort of polished-up east London staccato, which acts as both a reminder of where she grew up and the social circles to which her wealth and fame have brought her since. The Britain of Rendell's books is one of respectable girls, corner shops and neighbourhood gossip; a veneer you can rely on to buckle and crack, revealing the kind of social horrors behind the darkest tabloid headlines: murders, pedophilia, drug rings, sociopaths.

All of which surface in her latest book, Tigerlily's Orchids, which revolves around the residents of a quiet London neighbourhood and what each one has to hide. Stuart and his glamorous girlfriend Claudia, for example, whose short-tempered husband is getting very suspicious about her activities; or Wally, the building's caretaker, who is finding it increasingly difficult to keep his sexual proclivities to himself. Then there is Tigerlily herself, a beautiful young Asian woman who lives opposite the flats. She is as enigmatic as the blacked-out windows of her home and is almost never seen without the much older man who lives there, too.
In person, Rendell is so poised and proper that she seems an unlikely source of such shadowy material. To be fair, she is rather more restrained than most modern crime writers.
Almost all of the really lurid stuff happens off stage and she eschews gory details, although she admits, rather sniffily, that "I would probably sell a lot better in America if I had a lot of violence in my books. But that doesn't interest me." What fascinates her is the idea of losing control. Often, compulsion -- sexual urges or psychopathic desires -- underlies her characters' grim behaviour. Witnessing the slow slackening of a character's grip on events builds a horrible tension into her stories.
More at The Australian.