Happy Birthday to the “Queen of Crime”

Today is the birthday of author Ruth Rendell, who has sold at least 20 million copies of more than 60 novels, translated into 25 languages worldwide. Her most famous literary creation is police Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, who was named after taking a holiday in Ireland, as she noted in a recent interview. It was a choice between the Irish cities of Wexford and Waterford (approximately 60 kilometers apart), but Rendell happens to "like the letter X in names."

She says she actually didn't like Wexford in his first novel, From Doon with Death, wanting him to be "a bit less tough, more tolerant, a bit more literate, more liberal, more interesting to me." As she developed these qualities in later novels, the books' themes began to tackle racism, the environment and domestic violence, even though Rendell was afraid her readers wouldn't like it. The author hasn't stopped tackling contemporary topics, coming out strongly against a plan by the Suffolk County Council in the UK to close two-thirds of its libraries, adding "The thing is, if they are closed they will never open again."