Ruth Rendell.

On 17 February 1930, Ebba Elise Kruse and Arthur Grasemann had a daughter, Ruth Barbara, in South Woodford, Essex. Her mother was Danish, an ancestry Rendell later used as the basis for her novel Asta’s Book. She attended Loughton County High School and started work as a reporter for an Essex newspaper, but her editors forced her to resign after she filed a story about a local sports club dinner she had not attended — the after-dinner speaker had died mid-speech.

In 1964, Rendell published her first novel, From Doon with Death, introducing Inspector Wexford. She would write more than 60 crime novels. Director Pedro Almodóvar adapted Live Flesh in 1997, and Claude Chabrol adapted La cérémonie in 1995. Under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, she wrote psychological thrillers including Asta’s Book, drawing on her Danish ancestry, and The Blood Doctor, inspired by her time as a life peer. Rendell won four Gold Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association and an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Rendell married Donald John Rendell in 1950. They divorced in 1975 but remarried two years later and remained together until Don’s death in 1999. She had one son, Simon Arthur Charles Rendell. She received the CBE in 1996 and became a life peer in 1997, taking the title Baroness of Babergh. She used her seat in the House of Lords as inspiration for the novel The Blood Doctor.

The television adaptation of Rendell’s Inspector Wexford series, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, aired from 1987 to 2000. She won the Cartier Diamond Dagger in 1991 and the Grand Master Award in 2013. In 1997, she became a life peer for services to literature. Her psychological insights and social commentary continue to inspire modern crime writers.