Dark Corners (novel)

Dark Corners is a 2015 crime fiction novel by British writer Ruth Rendell, the last she wrote before her death that same year.^[1] The novel has no dedication or epigraph.^[2] The title of the book is taken from a phrase in the William Shakespeare play Measure for Measure.^[3]

First edition (publ. Hutchinson)

Plot

Novelist Carl Martin has fallen on hard times financially, so when he inherits a house after his father's passing he quickly rents the upper floors to the first person he interviews, the strange and intense Dermot McKinnon.

Carl's other inheritance is a collection of alternative medicines his father had amassed, including a diet pill that had been recently linked to a few deaths.

After some unfortunate events Carl is blackmailed by Dermot and begins to spiral into darkness while more information about his tenant is brought to light.^[4]