Ruth Rendell has won many awards, including the Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger for 1976's best crime novel with A Demon in my View; a second Edgar in 1984 from the Mystery Writers of America for the best short story, The New Girl Friend; a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986; and most recently she was the winner of the 1990 Sunday Times Literary award, as well as the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre. In 1996, she was awarded the CBE. Her books have been translated into twenty-two languages and are also published to great acclaim in the United States. Ruth Rendell is married and lives in a sixteenth-century farmhouse in Suffolk.

Ruth Rendell also writes as Barbara Vine. She died in 2015.