A thoroughly chilling book that features a young killer called Mix Cellini who has a room in an old house with an eccentric old spinster. He is obsessed with the killer Reginald Christie who lived in the same area some fifty years preiously. His landlady had met Chistie once too.
We are inside the minds of the characters and this gives the novel the air of the film 10 Rillington Place. The most frightening thing for me is that we begin to believe in the killer and feel with him. In some ways we do not want him to be caught, we feel his fears as he experiences them.
Normal, righteous people are also in the book and they are like a tide ebbing and flowing into Cellini's life. He fends them off for most of the book to avoid discovery of his crimes. Unfortunately in life people like this exist and the telling of this story is mastery by Ruth Rendell.
9/10 for me.
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