A Spot of Folly: Ten and a Quarter New Tales of Murder and Mayhem
by Ruth Rendell, Sophie Hannah
Why You'll Love This
Ruth Rendell could make ordinary people do terrible things — and make you understand exactly why.
- Great if you want: psychological short fiction where comeuppance arrives unexpectedly
- The experience: tense, unsettling vignettes — best read one or two at a time
- The writing: Rendell dissects ego and self-deception with cold, clinical precision
- Skip if: you prefer novels — short story pacing leaves little room to settle in
About This Book
What happens when obsession curls quietly into violence, when an ordinary lie spirals past the point of no return, when the most dangerous person in the room is the one you invited in? This collection gathers ten previously uncollected Ruth Rendell stories—plus that tantalizing quarter-tale—each one a precisely constructed trap. Jealousy, greed, vanity, and delusion all take turns as the engine of destruction, and the results are bracingly unpredictable. Sophie Hannah's editorial hand has shaped an anthology that feels less like scattered leftovers and more like a curated exhibition of human weakness at its most lethal.
Rendell's short fiction operates differently from her novels: the compression sharpens everything, and her cool, almost clinical prose makes the slow dread more effective, not less. These stories don't lunge at the reader; they lean in, lower their voice, and let the wrongness accumulate sentence by sentence. The variety of settings and situations keeps the collection from feeling repetitive, while the consistent psychological intelligence holds it together. For readers who love crime fiction that trusts them to pay attention, this is exactly the kind of book that rewards a second pass.