Carl is a crime novelist with one book published and another under way. His father has left him a house in Maida Vale and a collection of “alternative medicines”. On the first page of her final, posthumously published novel, Dark Corners, Ruth Rendell intimates that at least one of these facts will lead to Carl’s ruin.
Carl has a girlfriend called Nicola and a lodger called Dermot. Dermot soon becomes problematic. He is creepy, noisy and nosy and burrows his way into Carl’s life. When Carl sells slimming pills to an actress friend who then overdoses and dies, he finds himself the victim of blackmail. Confiding in Nicola only makes things worse and Carl’s world is soon spinning out of control. Rendell handles all of this with her usual economical brilliance and although Carl is no Raskolnikov, when his way of life is threatened, a violent demise is never far from his mind.
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