Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, (née Grasemann; 17 February 1930 – 2 May 2015), was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.Rendell's best-known creation, Chief Inspector Wexford, was the main character of many popular police stories, some of them successfully adapted for TV. A second string of works was a series of unrelated crime novels, that deeply explored the psychological background of criminals and their victims, many of them mentally afflicted or otherwise socially isolated. This theme was developed further in a third series of novels, published under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.