Many recent retirees will understand why Ruth Rendell's familiar protagonist, Reg Wexford, is feeling a bit aimless in the early pages of The Vault.

RT @RickKleffel: New podcast of my interview with Baroness Ruth Rendell

After talking with Ruth Rendell, I can honestly say that she is the most civilized person who has ever robbed me of sleep.

Crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell talks to Ruth Rendell about "Vault", her 23rd Inspector Wexford novel.

There's been disagreement about Ruth Rendell's The Vault, in which Reg Wexford is called in when four corpses are found in the coal hole of a house used in a previous Rendell novel.

Ruth Rendell at Montpellier Gardens: Saturday, October 8, 2011.

The prolific author of over seventy novels and creator of Inspector Wexford, Ruth Rendell is one of our most distinguished crime novelists. She joins us to discuss her latest book The Vault which sees the now retired Wexford return to take on a case of fiendish difficulty and danger.

Wexford, a devoted grandfather who sends his very first email here, is the antithesis of the artistic and autistic Teddy Brex, the creepy student protagonist of A Sight for Sore Eyes. The Vault, as a sort-of-sequel, is a bold attempt to combine Rendell's two chosen specialities: the police procedural and the psychological thriller.

Ruth Rendell’s Wexford is now an OAP but, at 81, the author’s own life is far from quiet retirement, finds Jake Kerridge.

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.

"I thought I should retire him but not leave him out of the series all together," says Ms. Rendell, 81. "He's very aware that he's no longer what he was."

A new Wexford Novel