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Written by Ruth Rendell - Performed by Simon Russell Beale - Unabridged Fiction - 8 RETAIL EDITION CASSETTES - 11 hours, 22 minutes

Publisher, Chivers Audio Books (January 2000)

NOTE: RETAIL EDITIONS are packaged in attractive, compact cardboard or jewel-case shrink-wrapped boxes, with full-color art.

"Ruth Rendell is, unequivocally, the most brilliant mystery novelist of our time." —Patricia Cornwell

Set in and around London's Regent's Park, where the city's wealthiest, poorest, kindest, and most vicious citizens all cross paths, The Keys to the Street tells of the deadly thanks a young woman risks receiving in return for an act of selfless generosity. "Is it true that we dislike those who have done us a service?" asks Mary Jago's grandmother. One of many questions about the best and worst of human nature, it is one with an answer Mary will discover for herself as a consequence of donating her own bone marrow to save the life of a young man she doesn't know. "It's us he's after," says Dill, "our sort." Dill's sort are the homeless who seek refuge in the park, whose corpses have lately been turning up impaled on the spiked railings that surround it. Mary is not their sort at all and would under ordinary circumstances be separated from such horror by social barriers stronger than iron bars. But she has performed a bold act; it has encouraged her to reject her abusive lover and to believe in the possibility of finding love with a soul as gentle as her own. The circumstances of her life are now extraordinary; she is receptive to previously undreamed of happiness, and vulnerable to the darkest grief.

About the Performer: Simon Russell Beale has spent many seasons with the RSC at Stratford and at the Barbican in such productions as Restoration, Edward II and A Winter's Tale. Other theatre credits include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and The Duchess of Malfi. He has also appeared on TV in A Very Peculiar Practice and Persuasion and has performed many times on BBC Radio.