Ruth Rendell - more literary fame

krappyrubsnif

More literary fame. Stroud Green is the setting of a 1984 Ruth Rendell schlock-horror supernatural thriller called The Killing Doll.

There are snippets on Google Books. I love the review: "Rendell's quiet English setting harbors a surprising, slightly excessive number of criss-crossing nut-cases." Yep, that gets SG to a tee.

The plot seems to involve witchcraft, Alesteir Crowley style orgies, alcoholism, male homosexuality and lesbianism.......crikey. No change there then. A lot of this seems to go on in 'a house at the Stroud Green end of Mount Pleasant Gardens, facing what remains of the old green'. I don't think there is a Mount Pleasant Gardens but it's close.

@Ali you were right, Stephen King does not have the exclusive rights to supernatural experiences on Parkland Walk, this must be the book you were thinking of on another thread.

Anyone read it?

ADGS

Yeah, purely because of the local connection - I've not read any others of hers, so don't know how this compares. The Parkland Walk sections are pretty good, but otherwise she doesn't have King's sense of place; she has to fiddle with the geography slightly to make the plot work (as in, I can tell which road on Crouch Hill she's replaced with the road where her main characters live, and it's not just the name which has changed, she's had to straighten it out too).
It's an efficient enough little shocker, but it didn't inspire me to keep reading her.

magicP

I'll have to look this one out. I like her stuff a lot. Some of her Barbara Vine ones are set around Muswell Hill.

ADGS

Not Rendell, but I've just read another crime book with a couple of local references. It's one of Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit books, which have mostly been heavily based in London lore - but in Bryant & May On The Loose we learn that a regular supporting character, the detectives' white witch consultant, lives on Avenell Road. There's also a reference to "the horrors of North London's crack-addled Blackstock Road". Which seemed *slightly* harsh. Anyway, good read, mainly set around the redevelopment of King's Cross and the nastiness stirred up thereby.