A Novel    • reading group guide   • customer reviews Ruth
Rendell is widely considered to be crime fiction’s reigning
queen, with a remarkable career spanning more than forty years.
Now, in Portobello, she delivers a captivating and intricate
tale that weaves together the troubled lives of several people
in the gentrified neighborhood of London’s Notting Hill.
Walking to the shops one day, fifty-year-old Eugene Wren
discovers an envelope on the street bulging with cash. A man
plagued by a shameful addiction—and his own good intentions—Wren
hatches a plan to find the money’s rightful owner. Instead of
going to the police, or taking the cash for himself, he prints a
notice and posts it around Portobello Road. This ill-conceived
act creates a chain of events that links Wren to other
Londoners—people afflicted with their own obsessions and
despairs. As these volatile characters come into Wren’s life—and
the life of his trusting fiancée—the consequences will change
them all.  is a wonderfully complex tour de for