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Portobello

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Portobello

By: Ruth Rendell
Narrated by: Nigel Anthony
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About this listen

 The Portobello area of West London has a rich personality - vibrant, brilliant in colour, noisy, with graffiti that approach art, bizarre and splendid. An indefinable edge to it adds a spice of danger. There is nothing safe about Portobello...

Eugene Wren inherited an art gallery from his father near an arcade that now sells cashmere, handmade soaps and children's clothes. But he decided to move to a more upmarket site in Kensington Church Street. Eugene was fifty, with prematurely white hair. He was, perhaps, too secretive for his own good. He also had an addictive personality. But he had cut back radically on his alcohol consumption and had given up cigarettes. Which was just as well, considering he was going out with a doctor. For all his good intentions, though, there was something he didn't want her to know about.

On a shopping trip one day, Eugene, quite by chance, came across an envelope containing money. He picked it up. For some reason, rather than report the matter to the police, he wrote a note and stuck it up on lamppost near his house:

"Found in Chepstow Villas, a sum of money between eighty and a hundred and sixty pounds. Anyone who has lost such a sum should apply to the phone number below."

This note would link the lives of a number of very different people - each with their obsessions, problems and dreams and despairs. And through it all the hectic life of Portobello would bustle on.

©2008 Kingsmarkham Enterprises Ltd (P)2008 Random House Audiobooks Mystery Fiction Suspense Money

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Critic reviews

"Ruth Rendell is marvellous at psychological tension ¿ Rendell is too clever and too accomplished to serve up the expected."(The Sunday Times)
"At the heart of the area, drawing in rich and poor alike, is the feverishly bustling Portobello market. For this social phenomenon, Rendell has a Dickensian empathy, informed by a prodigious love of London life. Her account, bursting with colour and vitality, is a treat." (Independent)
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Ruth Rendell never fails, does she? Perfection as ever. Add to that the best narrator and this is an absolute treat. Think I’ve listened to every book they’re on together…what shall I do with my life?!

Ruth and Nigel - Fabulous as Always

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left me unsatisfied at the end for some reason

not her best

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