End in Tears

Bestseller Rendell's riveting new novel in her Chief Inspector Wexford series (The Babes in the Wood, etc.) links two disparate worlds—a child-surrogacy ring and the construction trade. A teenage mother, Amber Marshalson, is found dead in the grass outside her home in Kingsmarkham, her skull crushed by a piece of brick. A short time later, Amber's pregnant friend, Megan Bartlow, turns up murdered in a seedy, about-to-be-rehabbed Victorian row house. Suspicions center on a tall man wearing a hooded fleece jacket.

Against this sinister backdrop stands Wexford, who's in lion-in-winter mode. He's irked and perplexed by modern life, by the casual way young girls conceive babies, by the sprawl devouring the once-lush Sussex countryside, even by his own fractious family. But he never loses the anger and dedication that propel him to solve crimes and understand evil.