Ruth Rendell's son hopeful of more TV adaptations

The son of crime author Ruth Rendell said he hoped more of her works would be turned into large-scale television and film adaptations.

Rendell, born in 1930 in South Woodford, east London, wrote more than 75 novels under both her real name and the pen name Barbara Vine before she died in 2015.

For a time, she lived in Polstead near Hadleigh in Suffolk, which her son, Simon Rendell, said she had loved.

Simon, who now lives in Denver, Colorado, in the US, said he hoped future generations would be able to see her work on the big screen.

"I'm hoping that there will be a full-length feature film or another series for Netflix, but there's been nothing that's come along yet," he said.

"Although you'd think there'd be plenty of room out there for that, for new mystery movies, and we would love that."

He added: "You've got to remember that Agatha Christie died in 1983 and they're still bringing out new stuff.

"My mother's only been gone 11 years, so people have to be patient, and these things take a long time for script writing, photography and financing for these series.

"So we should see what happens, and for future generations it would be nice."

Rendell was best known for her Inspector Wexford series, which were incredibly successful detective and crime fiction novels.

She has often been credited with bringing a social and psychological dimension to crime fiction.

Some of her works were adapted for television, including the Wexford series for ITV starring George Baker as the inspector between 1987 and 2000.

Rendell and her husband, Don, lived in numerous parts of Suffolk for 30 years.

Their home in Polstead, called Nusstead, partly inspired her novel A Fatal Inversion, Simon said, which involved a Suffolk country home and a murder during a long hot summer in 1976.

Numerous roads around the county have been named after Rendell, such as Rendell Crescent and Wexford Way in Bury St Edmunds.

"She loved to walk, and she would walk around the country paths and lanes," Simon said.

"She was always into exercising, and she was very healthy for her age.

"She loved the Suffolk sky, the pink Suffolk sky, also the architecture, the farmhouses, many of which are painted Suffolk pink."

She later moved to London when she became a Labour life peer in 1997, and her husband was ill.

In January 2015, she suffered a stroke and died in London in May of that year.

Both her and Don's ashes were interred at St Bartholomew's church in Groton, near Sudbury, where they had also lived.

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