Adam and Eve and Pinch Me - Hardcover

Rendell, Ruth

3.66

2,718 ratings by Goodreads

9780609610251: Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609610252 ISBN 13: 9780609610251

Publisher: Crown, 2002

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Jock Lewis was supposed to have died in that terrible train crash at Paddington. Minty, his girlfriend, received a letter from Great Western telling her so. But, curiously, the police haven’t been in touch. And Jock has borrowed all her savings . . .

Zillah also got a letter from the railway company, informing her that her husband, Jerry Leach, was dead. Something about the letter struck her as suspicious, but she chooses not to mention her doubts to the up-and-coming Conservative Member of Parliament who has just proposed a marriage of convenience . . .

Fiona, a successful banker, met Jeff Leigh before the Paddington crash in August. Although he never seemed to have a job, and borrowed money from her, she is utterly devoted to him—and can’t understand why he suddenly has disappeared . . .

As this novel gets under way, it is not immediately apparent how the lives of these women might be connected, or how they may figure into a series of vicious stabbing deaths that have shocked and terrified the citizens of London. With consummate skill, Ruth Rendell pulls the colorful strands of this harrowing story ever tighter, increasing the tension page by page.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

In Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, the mills of the gods appear to have ground Jock Lewis to dust--or have they? Jock's obsessive-compulsive girlfriend, Minty, thinks he was killed in a train crash and is tormented by his ghost. But the cheerfully amoral Jock--AKA Jerry Leach and Jeff Leigh, depending on which woman he's romancing--faked his death to move on to yet another unsuspecting lady. His one legal wife has swept their union hastily under the rug and married a conservative member of Parliament, who has his own urgent secrets. Jock's most recent fianc�e, a successful banker, hasn't minded keeping him in the manner to which he's become accustomed--that is, until the day he doesn't come home. When his body is found in a cinema, the intersections of his past collapse in a way that destroys some lives and rebuilds others.

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me is no whodunit: the murderer is known from the outset. The suspense arises from the uncertainty of whether justice will be served. That deftly handled angle draws the reader into the book, while Ruth Rendell's famously acute insight into all forms of borderline madness makes it all so believably chilling. --Barrie Trinkle

From the Back Cover:

“Ruth Rendell is one of the greatest novelists presently at work in our language.”
—Scott Turow

“Rendell is not only irresistible because of the brilliance of her descriptions of contemporary life and the sad truth of her characters. She is a great storyteller who knows how to make sure that the reader has to turn the pages out of a desperate need to find out what is going to happen next.”
—John Mortimer

“It is not only her rate of productivity which is startling. It is also her ability . . . to tap into registers of feeling which range from the commonplace to the psychopathic. She is to be treasured.”
—Anita Brookner

“Those who haven’t read Ruth Rendell have missed something unique and wonderful.”
—Tony Hillerman

“Ruth Rendell is, unequivocally, the most brilliant mystery novelist of our times. Her stories are a lesson in a human nature as capable of the most exotic love as it is of the cruelest murder. She does not avert her gaze and magnificently triumphs in a style that is uniquely hers and mesmerizing.”
—Patricia Cornwell

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.