The vault

Years after the events of A Sight for Sore Eyes, four bodies turn up in the same underground sewer. Retired Chief Inspector Wexford is called back to the case. Following a tangled path that leads back to the original killings, he finds his own life upended by a personal tragedy.

The Vault is part of Ruth Rendell's long-running series about Wexford, a patient, observant detective whose work is set in the fictional English town of Kingsmarkham. Readers who know the earlier books will recognise the familiar cast and setting, though the story is a self-contained procedural mystery.