THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT

Exclusive unabridged reading of the latest best-seller from Barbara Vine(Ruth Rendell).It's late spring of 1990 and a love affair is flourishing: between IvorTesham, a thirty-threeyear old rising star of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, andHebe Furnal, astunning North London housewife stuck in a dull marriage. What excitementHebe lacks athome, however, is amply compensated for by the well-bred and intenselyattractive Tesham -an ardent womanizer and ambitious politican.On the eve of her twenty-eighth birthday, Tesham decides to give Hebe apresent toremember: something far more memorable than, say, the costly string ofpearls he'salready lavished upon her. Involving a fashionable new practice known as'adventure sex', aman arranges for his unsuspecting but otherwise willing girlfriend to besnatched from thestreet, bound and gagged, and delivered to him at a mutually agreed venue.Set amidst an age of IRA bombings, the first Gulf War, and sleazypolitics, "The BirthdayPresent" is the gripping story of a fall from grace, and of a man whocarries within him all thehypocrisy, greed and self-obsession of a troubled era.Barbara Vine is Ruth Rendell, the best-selling crime novelist and authorof the muchloved "Wexford" mysteries.Writing as Barbara Vine, she has won numerous awards. Some of her novelshave beensuccessfully televised. Ruth Rendell is a Fellow of the Royal Society ofLiterature. In 1991she was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger for alifetime'sachievement in crime writing. In 1997 she was created a life peer and tookthe title BaronessRendell of Babergh.