A Judgement in Stone.

RENDELL, Ruth.

$1,750.00

Item Number: 44083

London: Hutchinson, 1977.

First edition of the author’s masterpiece. Octavo, original cloth. Lengthily signed by the author on the title page with a transcription from the opening line of this work, “Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write” Ruth Rendell.” Fine in a fine dust jacket. A unique example.

On Valentine's Day, four members of the Coverdale family--George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles--were murdered in the space of 15 minutes. Their housekeeper, Eunice Parchman, shot them, one by one, in the blue light of a televised performance of Don Giovanni. When Detective Chief Superintendent William Vetch arrests Miss Parchman two weeks later, he discovers a second tragedy: the key to the Valentine's Day massacre hidden within a private humiliation Eunice Parchman has guarded all her life. "Rendell writes with such elegance and restraint, with such literary voice and an insightful mind, that she transcends the mystery genre and achieves something almost sublime" (Los Angeles Times). The novel was filmed twice: The Housekeeper starred Rita Tushingham as the illiterate maid, and La Cérémonie, directed by Claude Chabrol, where Sandrine Bonnaire played the role.