Ruth Rendell Meets Martin Cruz Smith Noir
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- Ruth Rendell published her first novel, From Doon with Death, in 1964 and went on to write over 60 crime novels before her death in 2015.
- Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park (1981) introduced detective Arkady Renko and became an international bestseller, spawning seven sequels including Red Square (1992).
- Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent (1987) sold over 9 million copies and redefined the legal thriller genre.
- Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series debuted with The Ritual Bath in 1986; Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware series launched with When the Bough Breaks the same year.
- Rendell won three Edgar Awards and the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 1991.
Portobello — Ruth Rendell
A scalpel-sharp vivisection of London gentrification where every character is lying about something. Rendell sets this late-career novel (2008) on Portobello Road, where antique dealers, junkies, and inheritance-fixated pensioners orbit each other in grinding proximity. The plot hinges on a discarded oxycodone stash and the paranoia it breeds, but the real pleasure is watching Rendell catalogue class resentment like an entomologist pinning beetles. The prose is lean, the observation merciless — no one writes middle-class self-delusion this well. Explore our current copy of Portobello or browse more Crime books at Patina.Red Square — Martin Cruz Smith
Arkady Renko chases black-market traders through collapsing Moscow — Smith's grimiest Cold War requiem. Red Square (1992) picks up Renko's trail after Gorky Park made him the most morally compromised detective in modern fiction. Here he's investigating the murder of a black-market dealer amid the chaos of Gorbachev-era Moscow, where capitalism and corruption arrive in the same unmarked van. Smith writes geopolitical decay like it's weather — omnipresent, suffocating, impossible to escape. The forensic detail is obsessive (Renko notices everything), but the real tension lives in watching a man try to enforce Soviet law while the Soviet Union disintegrates around him. Explore our current copy of Red Square or browse more Crime books at Patina.Pleading Guilty — Scott Turow
A legal thriller disguised as a midlife crisis — Turow's messiest, most human protagonist hunts missing millions inside his own firm. Mack Malloy is a washed-up lawyer tasked with finding a missing partner and $5.6 million in client funds, but mostly he's drinking too much and cataloguing his failures in real time. Turow (who wrote Presumed Innocent, the gold standard of courtroom paranoia) uses the legal procedural as a frame for something sadder and funnier: a man realising he's been complicit in institutional rot for decades. The prose is dense with Chicago atmosphere and self-loathing — Malloy narrates like a smarter, more literate version of your most difficult uncle. Explore our current copy of Pleading Guilty or browse more Crime books at Patina.Presumed Innocent — Scott Turow
The legal thriller that invented the template: prosecutor Rusty Sabich defends himself against a murder charge and unravels his marriage in parallel. Turow's 1987 debut weaponised courtroom procedure into psychological torture. Sabich is accused of killing his former lover, a colleague in the prosecutor's office, and the trial becomes a three-way dissection of his career, his marriage, and the institutional politics that let both fester. The legal manoeuvring is airtight (Turow clerked for the Illinois Supreme Court), but the real devastation is domestic — watching Sabich's wife, Barbara, sit in the courtroom gallery and calculate her next move. As of April 2026, Patina's Crime collection includes rotating copies of Turow's backlist, all of which smell faintly of yellowed newsprint and regret. Explore our current copy of Presumed Innocent or browse more Crime books at Patina.Straight into Darkness — Faye Kellerman
Munich, 1929: a Jewish detective investigates murders while Nazism coalesces in the beer halls — historical noir with zero romanticisation. Faye Kellerman (best known for her Peter Decker series) sets this standalone in Weimar Germany, where detective Axel Berg navigates rising fascism, cabaret culture, and a string of murders targeting young women. The period detail is suffocating — you can smell the cigarette smoke and feel the political dread — but Kellerman refuses to turn pre-war Germany into aesthetic wallpaper. Berg's Jewish wife and his own compromised position make every investigation a moral calculation. The pacing is deliberate, the atmosphere thick enough to chew. Explore our current copy of Straight into Darkness or browse more Crime books at Patina.Therapy (Alex Delaware series, Book 18) — Jonathan Kellerman
Psychologist Alex Delaware dissects a murder inside the therapy industrial complex — Kellerman's sharpest skewering of Los Angeles self-help culture. Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels are procedurals in the technical sense (Delaware consults for LAPD, bodies pile up, cases close), but the real engine is his cynicism about California's wellness grift. In Therapy (2004), a successful actress is murdered, and the investigation tunnels through her therapists, gurus, and handlers — all of whom have motives and none of whom tell the truth the first time. Kellerman writes L.A. privilege with the precision of someone who's spent decades watching it corrode people from the inside. The prose is clean, the psychology credible, the contempt barely concealed. Explore our current copy of Therapy or browse more Crime books at Patina. Rendell's London, Smith's Moscow, Turow's Chicago courtrooms — these are crime novels where place and psychology do equal work, and the paperback spines show it. Creased covers, marginalia in the jury-deliberation chapters, the occasional coffee ring from a reader who couldn't put it down. Shop all Crime books at Patina Paperbacks →Where can I buy secondhand Ruth Rendell novels in Australia?
Patina Paperbacks stocks rotating preloved copies of Rendell's psychological thrillers, including later novels like Portobello and earlier Inspector Wexford titles. All stock ships Australia-wide from our Sydney base, with free shipping over $29. Browse the current Crime collection to see what's on the shelves this month.
What's the best Martin Cruz Smith novel to start with if I've never read Arkady Renko?
Gorky Park (1981) is the canonical entry point — it introduces Renko and the Moscow atmosphere Smith built his career on. But honestly, Red Square works as a standalone if you want the post-Soviet collapse vibe without backtracking. Both are brutal, procedural, and relentlessly grey in the best way.
How does Scott Turow compare to John Grisham?
Turow writes slower, denser, and with more psychological weight — his protagonists tend to be complicit, exhausted, and morally compromised rather than heroic. Grisham's legal thrillers are plot machines; Turow's are character studies disguised as courtroom drama. If you want pace, read Grisham. If you want to feel bad about the legal system and everyone in it, read Turow.
Are Jonathan Kellerman and Faye Kellerman related?
Yes — they're married. Jonathan writes the Alex Delaware psychological thrillers set in Los Angeles; Faye writes the Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series set in the LAPD. Both launched their respective series in 1986, both lean heavily on forensic detail and California settings, and both are worth reading if you like procedurals with actual psychology instead of algorithmic twists.
What makes vintage crime thrillers different from modern releases?
Vintage thrillers — especially 1980s-2000s paperbacks — tend to trust the reader more. Longer chapters, fewer cliffhangers, less hand-holding with exposition. The prose assumes you're reading at night with a lamp on, not scrolling on a train. Plus, the physical copies have texture: foxed pages, creased spines, the faint smell of someone else's bookshelf. You're not just reading a story; you're holding evidence of its previous life.