Product Description

Eccentric Jarvis lives in a cumbling schoolhouse overlooking the tube line, compiling his obsessive history of the Underground. A group of misfits are also drawn towards his strange house: Alice, who has run away from her husband and baby; Tom, the busker who rescues her; truant Jasper who finds his terrifying thrills on the tube; and enigmatic Axel, whose deadly secret casts a shadow over all their lives. Damaged, dispossessed, outcasts, they are brought together in violent and unforeseen ways by London's dark and dangerous underground system.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #228091 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
'Simply put, Vine is one of the greatest writers ever' Scott Turow. ... Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. Viking have published all her previous novels, including A Dark Adapted Eye, which won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Ruth Rendell sits in the House of Lords as a Labour peer. She lives in Maida Vale, London.

Customer Reviews

review of King Solomon's Carpet
I think this is my favourite Vine novel. From its tragic opening to its end it concerns itself with the people and the places of the London Underground. The often bizarre and pathological relationships between the characters make the book a tense exploration of psychological abnormality,and there's a wonderful eccentricity in the atmosphere that combined with a really original plot development and brilliant ending makes this a great read.

Chilling and gripping
A great book! I do prefer her writing as Barabara Vine rather than Ruth Rendell, it must be said.

This offering is typical of Vine: more than a bit odd, creepy, an exploration of the darker aspects of human nature. It's fantastically well-written, and grabs a hold of you right from the beginning. Vine introduces her characters one by one, and gradually fills in the spaces in between them, all the way up to the very last page, when the whole story falls so perfectly and neatly into place.

It's a chilling tale in parts, one in which London's Tube network becomes a veritable protagonist, a true player in the story. Vine clearly did her homework before creating this fine book, so as to give the reader all the details one needs to *be* there, in the book. Only when one's one imagination can paint a more vivid picture does she merely sketch an outline for the reader to fill in.

I read this book whilst on holiday, enjoying the Maui sun. But it took me all the way to London, to the suburbs, to the bustling Underground stations, and to the frightening darkness of the deep line Tube tunnels. Truly exemplary writing!

Pulp Fiction on the London Underground
I read it last Xmas and it's a cracker!!! It has all the hallmarks of Vine - weirdness, suspense, ordinary characters doing extraordinary things and she's put a huge amount of research into it. I was hooked from beginning to end. I loved the way it focusses on a lot of characters and their stories are all sort of drawn together. When I say Pulp Fiction on London Underground, that'snot being derogatory...as I'd compare it to Tarrantino's film Pulp Fiction in how the disparate tales come together. I'm a bit biased as I have a love hate relationship with the tube.