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The Beach Butler / The Professional (Storycuts)

The Beach Butler / The Professional (Storycuts)

Summary

In 'The Beach Butler' Alison's holiday is proving underwhelming. She has had to take her holiday on her own, and finds the seaside a bore - except for the attentions of the remarkably handsome 'beach butler'. A chance discovery, however, radically alters the atmosphere.

In 'The Professional' a young man has a menial job in the department store which is not particularly fulfilling, although it pays a wage and provides a chance to talk to the pretty shop-girls. But when a woman is murdered in the store, far more profound truths surface than would otherwise have been suspected.

Part of the Storycuts series, these two short stories were previously published in the collection Piranha To Scurfy.

About the author

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, and will be remembered as a legend in her own lifetime. Her groundbreaking debut novel, From Doon With Death, was first published in 1964 and introduced the reader to her enduring and popular detective, Inspector Reginald Wexford, who went on to feature in twenty-four of her subsequent novels.

With worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, Rendell was a regular Sunday Times bestseller. Her sixty bestselling novels include police procedurals, some of which have been successfully adapted for TV, stand-alone psychological mysteries, and a third strand of crime novels under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. Very much abreast of her times, the Wexford books in particular often engaged with social or political issues close to her heart.

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. Her final novel, Dark Corners, was published in October 2015.
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