Road Rage

Road Rage, the seventeenth Inspector Wexford novel, sets personal stakes against a political plot when Chief Inspector Wexford's wife is taken hostage by radical environmental activists opposing a new road through the ancient woodlands outside Kingsmarkham. Rendell draws a sharp line between principled protest and the fanaticism that can emerge from it, and Wexford's professional detachment collapses entirely when his search for the hostages becomes a race to save his wife. The domestic and political converge in ways that give the novel unusual urgency.

Davina Porter's narration of the Wexford series is authoritative and deeply inhabited — she has embodied this world so thoroughly that listening to her narrate feels like returning to a well-known place. At just over twelve hours Road Rage gives Porter substantial material to work with, and her rendering of Wexford's barely controlled fear beneath the detective's precision is among the best work in her series performance.