A Sleeping Life

A Sleeping Life opens with the unexplained death of a woman who appears to have no verifiable life beyond her immediate neighborhood, no address, no employment, no known friends. Inspector Wexford's pursuit of Rhoda Comfrey's hidden identity becomes a meditation on the secret selves people construct and the violence that can erupt when those constructions are threatened.

George Baker's interpretation of Wexford is shaped by his long familiarity with Rendell's moral universe, and this Edgar Award-winning entry is one of the most psychologically acute in the series. Baker's patient, sympathetic voice draws out the pathos in a woman whose life was apparently erased, and the mystery's resolution, built on questions of identity that were genuinely radical for 1978, remains effective in audio.