The Saint Zita Society

Author(s): Ruth Rendell

Location(s): London

Genre(s): Crime

Era(s): Modern

Location

Content

Ruth Rendell’s Saint Zita Society is formed by disgruntled servants working in salubrious Belgravia. Not all are unhappy with their lot, for there are Dickensian below-stairs exploiters as well as thoughtless bankers and aristocrats in the grand apartments above, although the chauffeur who finds himself obliged to service both the mistress and the daughter of the house is uncertain as to his good fortune.

Rendell is excellent on the delicate snobbery of the uneasy territory in between the social classes and the resentful pride of those who might in the past have been termed “companions” rather than ladies’ maids, or of “trustafarians” whose families have fallen on hard times. The novel’s plot forms a complex web in which power sways back and forth between employer and employed, where every coming or going has an observer, and it’s not long before we anticipate at least two deaths on the way. The Independent

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