Ruth Rendell has probably pulled more surprises on her readers than any other crime writer. But the one she produces with her latest novel is a little unusual even by her standards. Set in the present, The Vault (Hutchinson, £18.99) deals with the discovery of four corpses in the disused coal hole of a Georgian cottage in St John’s Wood. The main investigator is Rendell’s long-running series hero, Chief Inspector Wexford, now retired and living part-time in Hampstead.

Both Benjamin Black and Ruth Rendell have written inviting new novels filled with nicely malevolent characters. It hardly seems sporting to relegate these books to the murder-story genre just because some of those characters wind up dead of unnatural causes.