The Keys to the Street

by Ruth Rendell

Book Overview

Set in and around London's Regents Park, where the city's wealthiest, poorest, kindest, and most vicious citizens all cross paths, this newest novel by the Edgar and Gold Dagger-winning author of Crocodile Bird tells of the deadly thanks a young woman risks receiving in return for an act of selfless generosity.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0517706857
• ISBN13: 9780517706855
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 326 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

I'm just speechless!

Fortunately I can type! I just finished the book on CD. What a book! I thought Live Flesh and Make Death Love Me were great, but, wow! I won't get critical here and pick it apart, just recommend it!

A joy to read. Yet another excellent book

This novel is rather like a symbolic microcosm of a solar system. That is the only way I can find to describe it. All that characters' lives go around in their own orbit, but occasionally they meet, those orbits cross, and each is influenced by this meeting in some way, be it good or bad, and they carry on once more, their paths forever altered slightly, or maybe not so slightly. Because this is Rendell's world, and in Rendell's world those planets don't always just cross, they collide. The main plot, I suppose, centres on Mary Jago, a young woman living in London. Mary has donated her own bone marrow to save the lie of a stranger. This generous act of kindness lead directly to the break-up of her relationship with the despiseable Alistair, and she moves out, taking up residence in a house on the edge of Regent's Park, looking after it while the owners are on holiday. However, soon, the man whose live she has saved will alter her own life irrevocably for ever.Inhabiting Regent's Park (which, I suppose, would be the Sun of the earlier analogy) are the dropouts, the street-people, forgotten and ignored by society, until a vicious killer starts targeting them, leaving their bodies impaled upon the railings that border the park. Rendell creates several of these misfits, the most important one, I suppose, being Roman, a man who took to the streets, leaving behind his past and possessions, when his life was shattered upon the deaths of his wife and young children in a horrific accident. He is particularly interesting. Then there is Bean, a retired butler-turned-dog-walker who roams the park every day exercising his canine clients, who despises the tramps who take refuge there. And then, most sinister of all, there is Hob, a hopeless drug addict living nearby in a rented flat, who is prepared to carry out acts of varying violence in return for very welcome payment...I've never read a novel quite like this before, and I doubt that I will again. It is flawless in every way. A book so astoundingly good that I have now read it three times (remarkable, considering that I am rarely even prepared to set time by to re-read a book even once). But, then, almost all Rendell's books have this effect upon me. She has a prose style like no other writer today. It is entirely without emotions, pretension, or anything else, and yet it is powerful and gripping. She doesn't fill her books with unnecessary description - but when she does do descriptions, they are like gems thrown in a buskers case - instead creating a palpable sense of atmosphere and soon-to-be-destroyed normality. She has a brilliant sense of place, making London d seem claustrophobic and terrifying, and I am almost sure that If I suddenly found myself in Regent's Park I would quicken my step distinctly through irrational and superfluous fear entirely of Rendell's creating.The characters she creates are drawn brilliantly, and are absolutely fascinating, every single one of them, so much so that I would gl

Another Winner

Ruth Rendell has done it again. I got out my map of London to pinpoint the location as she described the streets around Regent's Park. I was there some years ago, but had forgotten just how it is laid out.Her characters were wonderfully complicated as usual. They weren't quite what they seemed. Mary was rather naive and sheltered, but believable. I was happy she could defy her boyfriend, Alstair, who came across as a control freak. I liked the way Roman and his reasons for being on the streets were explained not all at once, but gradually. If only we knew the stories behind those we see on the streets we might feel compassion towards them.Mr. Bean, the dog walker, was great as a snobbish ex-servant. He was just eccentric enough to make you wonder how many more are there like him?

a beautifully written, captivating, and tragic tale

I don't understand how other reviewers could say the ending was unimaginative or 'pat"--I usually figure mysteries out and was totally shocked by this one, though it made sense in the end. I loved the different characters and was so involved in their stories, parts of which were almost too real and painful to read. Rendell touches on the scarey parts of life--the unpredictable tragedies and betrayals and losses, and how nothing is ever quite what it seems-- yet even in the midst of this pain there is love and goodness and redemption of a sort. There is also wonderful humor and such skilled, evocative writing in spots it almost takes the breath away. Her descriptions of love and passion are among the best I've ever read, as is the way she portrays pain and loss. I thought about this book a long time after I finished reading and was very affected by it. It is not the escapist or realistic reading many mystery lovers want, but it evokes emotion and is so beatifully written and says something mythic (and almost surreal) about people and life. To say Rendell does not understand young characters misses the point. Much of the criticism here seems to be is faulting literature for not being a far lesser thing. Rendell's world is not the real world but a fictional world that tells real truths. Some of the ending plot details bothered me, but the fictional dream of most of it swept me away and compelled me to keep reading.