Asta's Book
Asta's Book is a classic double-detective story by crime master Barbara Vine
For a good, absorbing, well-told story, you could hardly better the unveiling of Asta's secret' Sunday Times
It is 1905. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to East London from Denmark with their two little boys. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keeps loneliness and isolation at bay by writing a diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal. For they seem to hold the key to an unsolved murder and to the mystery of a missing child. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before.
'A dazzling domestic thriller' Guardian
'Obsessively readable' Sunday Telegraph
'Engrossing . . . a mixture of biography, true crime and romance people with vivid minor players and red with herrings' Independent on Sunday
'Absolutely enthralling ... the best yet from the Vine/Rendell bureau. Essential reading' Literary Review
'Simply put, Vine is one of the greatest writers ever' Scott Turow
Asta's Bookis a modern crime masterpiece and will be enjoyed by readers of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow.
Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs; Gallowglass; Asta's Book; No Night Is Too Long; In the Time of His Prosperity; The Brimstone Wedding; The Chimney Sweeper's Boy; Grasshopper; The Blood Doctor; The Minotaur; The Birthday Present and The Child's Child.
Barbara Vine was the pen-name of Ruth Rendell, and Viking published all of her books under that name.
Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, with worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, and regular Sunday Times bestsellers.
Rendell won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for 1976's best crime novel with A Demon in My View, a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986, and the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.
Ruth Rendell died in May 2015.