Grasshopper

(Paperback)

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Description

Blamed by her parents for the tragic death of a friend, Clodagh has been banished from their home in the countryside to a dingy basement flat in the city. Her life is transformed when she meets the inhabitants on the top floor of 15 Russia Road. An exotic range of young people who explore a London of roofs, eaves and ledges, thrilling in the freedom and danger. Clodagh, haunted still by the accident, finds that running the roofs brings her back to life, but it seems that tragedy and misfortune may not be done with her yet. Barbara Vine's 10th novel, Grasshopper is an enthralling, chilling novel that mirrors Vine's acclaimed London Underground novel King Solomon's Carpet.

Reviews

"Mesmerizing. . . . A teasing narrative of fatal obsession."--Orlando Sentinel

"The Vine novels are sublime works of psychological suspense...Grasshopper is as skillful as anything this wonderful writer has done."--The Seattle Times

"A typically elegant, and typically elegiac, turn from the woman with two award-winning names. And one superlative voice."--Fort Worth Star Telegram

Author Bio

Barbara Vine was the pen-name of Ruth Rendell, and Viking published all of her books under that name. Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, with worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, and regular Sunday Times bestsellers. Rendell won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for 1976's best crime novel with A Demon in My View, a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986, and the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer. Ruth Rendell died in May 2015.