A New Lease of Death

A New Lease of Death revisits a case Chief Inspector Wexford closed fifteen years earlier, the murder of an elderly woman that sent her handyman to the gallows. When the victim's son's fiancée prompts her father to investigate, Wexford must confront the possibility that the right man may not have been convicted, in a procedural that is as much about the fallibility of institutional certainty as it is about any particular crime.

George Baker's Wexford is a fixture of British audiobook storytelling, and this early series entry benefits from his understanding of Rendell's England, where surface respectability conceals a great deal of misery. Baker's warm, considered delivery conveys both Wexford's intelligence and his genuine discomfort at what the reopened investigation may reveal.