'I am being diminished, whittled away piece by piece, great chunks of my past detaching themselves like melting icebergs.'

News of Ruth Rendell's death on Saturday morning (UK time) did not come as a surprise after her stroke in January, but it hit me very hard. I have read her novels and short stories for half my life and drawn the kind of inspiration from them that no other author ever offered me. Her insights into damaged psyches and fractured, unhealthy relationships encouraged my fictional obsession with same and explains the frequent presence of both in my clumsy attempts at writing. I still have Val McDermid, Minette Walters and countless other favourites, but a world with no more Inspector Wexford mysteries, stand alone psychological thrillers or labyrinthine Barbara Vine novels where a secret past casts long shadows over the present will take some getting used to.

In 1997, as an angry young man of twenty, I devoted half of a misbegotten Honours thesis to Rendell's work. What a wasted opportunity that turned out to be. No-one explained to me that I needed to include some elements of the theoretical studies I mocked so relentlessly. If they had, and if my supervisor had been any use at all, I might have dug deeper into the minds of Freud, Jung and Adler and traced their influence on the young Rendell. A psychoanalytical interperation, even from an amateur, would have been a far worthier response than the glorified book review I eventually submitted.

My fondness for Rendell's writing endured in spite of this, and each new or hitherto unread novel or volume of short stories soon found a place in my collection. They became family affairs too. Between stretches in hospital when she could do little else but sit in her armchair and read, Nanna would devour the books at a rate of knots, often guessing whodunit within a few chapters. Later on Mum asked me for a few recommendations to read in bed and, in those rare moments when she could tear herself away from the radio, we discussed my choices over dinner. There was never any shortage of Rendell material around the house. Most birthdays and Christmases brought with them either a new release or a reprint of an old favourite I'd borrowed from the library but never owned.

All of those books, and many more, are now piled on the floor of what was once my bedroom. I cleared out my bookshelf so it could be moved into my present sleeping quarters. Sometime between now and doomsday, I need to decide which ones to keep, which to sell and which to donate to St Philip's next Autumn Fair or book sale. Parting with Ruth Rendell's near complete body of work won't be easy because each story has a memory attached to it, even if the twists and turns of the plots have long since blurred into each other.

The most treasured of all those memories is the author's signature inside the front cover of The Rottweiler.  I went to see Ruth Rendell at Adelaide Writers' Week in 2004, and it was a privilege to be in the presence of one of my most important role models if only for a few minutes. She was quite reserved and didn't talk to readers individually in the signing queue, but getting her autograph was and is a very big deal.

I have smaller but no less significant memories of my other Rendell books. Inscriptions like 'To Stephen, Love Mum 22/9___' or 'To Stephen, Love From Nanna 25/12___' carry more weight today than they did at the time, and that's not the sort of thing you can transfer over when you get all the ebooks and put them on your iPad.

I'd like to finish on a lighter note in the words of Baroness Rendell of Babergh herself, who once said she overcame her fear of getting police procedure wrong 'largely by leaving it out'. I think there's a good lesson in that for all of us who sweat blood over the finer details of who does what at a crime scene.