The Fallen Curtain Stories

Notes

The Fallen Curtain Stories by Ruth Rendell is a collection of 11 short stories. The headline story won an Edgar for Best Short Story in 1975. It was televised as one of the “Ruth Rendell Mysteries” twenty years later.

A collection of stories about people suffering from mental illness or with unbalanced personalities. Compelling, but this is not a set of happy endings.

Publisher’s Synopsis

A stranger lures a child into his car with the promise of sweets. A young man spots his fiancée’s double in a public park of ill repute. An executive visits the secluded home of a former employee whose intentions are frightfully unclear. A modest soul weds the woman he rescues from suicide–only to fall victim to an unfathomable form of possessiveness…

In the eleven tales gathered in The Fallen Curtain, Ruth Rendell — the grande dame of the literary mystery — lays bare the twisted inner workings of the unbalanced mind. Here are eleven tales of haunting psychological accuracy: the gesture that betrays a parent’s madness, the childhood memory clouded with denial, the utterance that introduces the threat of violence in a situation as benign as a dinner date.

Instantly engaging, maddeningly addictive, The Fallen Curtain testifies to the enduring talents of a master of the genre.

Read a full review of The Fallen Curtain Stories by Ruth Rendell at The Passing Tramp.