The Ruth Rendell Mysteries: Set 2 includes six more, engrossing television adaptations of Rendell's brand of psychological mystery-thrillers, featuring fine casts of familiar British actors in tense, provocative tales of obsession, guilt, revenge, and murder. The suspenseful anthology includes the terrific "May & June," starring Phoebe Nicholls as the estranged sister of new widow June (Christine Kavanagh), whose late husband was originally engaged to Nicholls’ character. Seeking a way to make amends years after the fact, June invites May to move into the spacious manor that once might have belonged to the latter. Though May accepts, her sneaky behavior and the hint of madness in her eyes suggest she might have something more sinister than sisterly companionship in mind. "The Orchard Walls" co-stars veteran actress Sylvia Syms and young Honeysuckle Weeks in the tense story of an adolescent girl from London sent to live with prickly, taciturn relatives in the countryside during the dangerous days of the blitz. Though charming and vivacious, Weeks’ character seems to bother every adult in sight, preoccupied as each one is by various secrets involving the affair of a married woman whose military husband is serving overseas. "A Dark Blue Perfume" is an eerie tale of barely-repressed, murderous madness. The still-luminous Susannah York stars as a widow whose attraction to an enigmatic neighbor (John Castle)--who might still be contemplating the murder of a woman he failed to kill years before--causes her to shake off the constrictions of small-town gossip and morality. "Front Seat" is a somewhat comical mystery starring Edward Hardwicke (Watson to Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes in the Granada Television series) as the henpecked husband of a bullying wife (Janet Suzman) who enlists a boozy old flame (Richard Johnson) to solve a decades-old murder. Hardwicke’s character, knowing the decadent pair will trample anyone in their path, sets out to resolve the unsolved case first--and possibly employ criminal means to put an end to his own, personal miseries. "A Case of Coincidence" is a head-scratcher starring Keith Barron, Pip Torrens, and Kate Buffery in the tale of a surgeon’s wife apparently murdered by a serial killer who was actually under police surveillance when the crime took place. Finally, "Bribery and Corruption" includes James D’Arcy, Paul Freeman, Tim Woodward and Abigail Cruttenden in a complicated mystery about a fellow who looks into the death of a married woman he once loved, only to learn her life was more troubled than he could have known. --Tom Keogh
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