PORTOBELLO

Ruth Rendell is in top form in this intricately plotted and richly satisfying novel. It does feature crime, suspense, even, finally, murder, but it transcends genre; the mystery is that of human nature and its demons. A strange young man named Joel Roseman loses some money near the Portobello shops. Prosperous art dealer Eugene Wren, also strange but in an utterly different way, finds the money and attempts to return it, attracting Lance, a thoroughly amoral young grifter. Tim Curry invests Joel with a smoothly growing creepiness that fills the plot with menace, but he is equally wonderful with Wren’s world and the feckless scammers of Lance’s. When Lance’s Cockney girlfriend, Gemma, delivers her idea of Wren’s posh diction, Curry is in heaven. Me, too. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2010]