Friday, August 21

In London with Ruth Rendell and Google Map

In the last days I have been in London.
In the area within and around Regent´s Park together with Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, (born 17 February 1930) and Google Earth / Google Map.However, my trip to London has not been performed through physical transit, and have been almost free of costs.
Ruth Rendell´s novel from 1996, The Keys to the Street (Nøglerne til Gaden, in Danish) was bought at a secondhand book market in Copenhagen some weeks ago, and the Google Earth software is of course part of my Macbook Pro and iPhone which you can download free.
The novel takes place in and around the fashionable Regent´s Park with the inner and outer circle, bridges and playgrounds for dogs. We stay in the neighborhood of London Central Mosque, London Business School, Baker Street, and Madame Tussauds to the south-west and the area around Albany Street with townhouses like those in Park Village West to the north-east.In this part of London (Westminster NW1), we meet John Dominic Cahill, Victor Clancy, David George Kneller in addition to Mary Jago, Carl and Leo Nash, Roman Ashton, Harvey Owen Bennet, Mr. Barker-Pryce, the Blackburn-Norris´and many other figures.

We have to be interested in the odd persons connected to the ares´s streets and shadow-sides. The homeless, beggars, drug dealers and fallen out, play a central role and in contrast to the posh people living almost next door. We learn about Bone Marrow Transplantation , and weird development of relations between donor and receiver, but mostly we learn about the passages, bridges and streets in this area, making it impossible not to have the online map by my side when reading.
When reading, or at least after finishing, I am sure you will want to return to previous pages for checking out details and parts that you read but did not see the fully consequences of.

The book is (maybe) a criminal novel, or a travel book, but the right classification may better be a Psychological Thriller
If you are going to London this autumn, read the novel, bring your street map and visit the the real Regent´s Park area at day time. During the night it may be dangerous.

I will most probably search for more literature by Ruth Rendell.

7 comments:

Anne said...

YES!! og jeg drar snart.
Har du gode tips utenom de vanlige severdigheter takes de imot med stor takk.

Fin fin fredag kveld.

Dagrun said...

Mener jeg har lest en bok som het "Dødelig selskap" eller noe i den dur av denne forfatteren. Jeg elsker krim, særlig i feriene, hehe. Da har jeg mer tid til å lese. Elsker å lese generelt da...

Anonymous said...

Yes Ruth Rendell is well known to me...not in a personal sense you understand. Her Thrillers are brilliant in that they capture every nuance, almost Balzakian in the detail.

Congratulations on your mention in POTD

CiCi said...

I read mysteries mostly, and usually read 4 to 5 books a week. I will check out Ruth Rendell now that I read your post.

Brian Miller said...

thanks for the intro...love to read so will check it out...great when you can go deeper by looking up the areas on the computer...when i first started reading James Paterson i was living in NC...made it that much more fun.

Kathleen said...

The most "novel" way I ever heard to sight-see!

imac said...

Well done on your award from David on his POTD.