Live Flesh

infobox Book |
name = Live Flesh
title_orig =
translator =


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author = Ruth Rendell
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Crime, Mystery novel
publisher = Hutchinson
release_date = 27 February 1986
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 272 pp (first edition, hardback)
isbn = ISBN 0-09-163680-9 (first edition, hardback)
preceded_by = The New Girlfriend
followed_by = Heartstones "Live Flesh", is a psychological thriller by British author Ruth Rendell, published in 1986. It won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year, and has also been loosely adapted into a critically acclaimed film of the same name by Pedro Almodóvar.

Plot summary

The novel's protagonist is Victor Jenner, sent to prison for shooting and crippling a police officer after an attempted rape. At his trial and afterwards he claims that his actions were unintentional and somehow provoked by his victim. But were there other reasons for his attack of which even he was unaware? Ten years later, Jenner is released from prison and has to find himself a new life, with the reduced resources produced by ten years incarceration in prison and the handicap of a significant criminal record. He discovers that it is all too easy to slip back into the old one.