The Girl Next Door is a 2014 novel by British crime author Ruth Rendell.

[4] During World War II, a group of children in Loughton, Essex, United Kingdom, which is where Rendell herself grew up, play in tunnels (in reality, the foundations of an uncompleted house) they discovered under a hill.

In the present day they are reunited after the discovery of two hands in a tin box when the tunnels are dug up for construction work.

[5] The novel deals frankly with changes and interrelationships of the characters and social changes generally, over seven decades.

In a review in The Observer, it was noted that instead of focusing on the crime, the novel dealt with the lives of the now elderly people in the present.