52. The Water's Lovely by Ruth Rendell

Water is key to the newest psychological mystery by veteran author Ruth Rendell. The book starts with a murder in a bathtub and ends with the tsunami in Indonesia. Years before the novel takes place, 13-year-old Heather Sealand is thought to have drowned her stepfather, Guy, in the family bathtub. This results in her sister, Ismay, to always wonder if and why she killed him and for their mother, Marion, to slip into mental illness. The novel focuses on the Sealand sisters now grown up and Heather falling in love with Hospice nurse Edmund Litton. Should Ismay inform Heather’s fiancé that he might be marrying a murderer?

Full of lots of atmospheric tension and wonderful plotting, this is a very psychologically creepy book. There are two subplots also featured that draw readers into the story – one about Marion Melville, who takes care of elderly people hoping to inherit their houses after she poisons them, and another about a killer who is haunting London parks. A very suspenseful story, this is more reminiscent of Rendell writing as Barbara Vine.