Ruth Rendell
Ruth Rendell. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian
Ruth Rendell is in hospital after suffering a serious stroke last Wednesday, her publisher has announced.
Hutchinson issued a statement on Thursday that the bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist was in hospital “under expert care in a critical but stable condition”. Her son Simon Rendell is with her, added the publisher, and the family have requested privacy “while the doctors assess the best course of treatment”.

“Our thoughts are with Ruth and her family at this difficult time,” said Hutchinson.
Rendell, 84, is the author of more than 60 novels, from the much-loved Inspector Wexford crime series to the darker, more psychological thrillers she writes as Barbara Vine. “Ruth and Barbara are two aspects of me,” she has written. “Ruth is tougher, colder, more analytical, possibly more aggressive … Barbara is more feminine … For a long time I have wanted Barbara to have a voice as well as Ruth. It would be a softer voice, speaking at a slower pace, more sensitive perhaps, and more intuitive.”

The novelist, like her late friend PD James a pillar of Britain’s crime writing scene for decades, has won nearly every crime award going, two years ago taking the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for “sustained excellence in crime writing”. Ian Rankin has called her “probably the greatest living crime writer”, adding that “if crime fiction is currently in rude good health, its practitioners striving to better the craft and keep it fresh, vibrant and relevant, this is in no small part thanks to Ruth Rendell”.

Rendell has been a Labour life peer since 1997, until recently attending the Lords three or four times a week, campaigning on issues including female genital mutilation, on which she helped pass a law preventing girls being sent abroad for the procedure.

In November, she wrote about the death of PD James for the Guardian; the two novelists had been friends for 40 years. “We never talked about crime – because it was what we both wrote about – and we never talked about politics,” Rendell wrote. “Phyllis joined the House of Lords several years before me. We were both utterly opposed to each other politically: she was a Tory and very much a committed Conservative, whereas I’m a socialist, I’m Labour and always have been. Once we were in for a vote and crossed paths going to the two division lobbies, she to the “content” lobby and I to the “not content” – and we kissed in the chamber, which caused some concern and amazement.”
Rendell recently completed another book for Hutchinson, which is due out this autumn.