- Put on By Cunning
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Put on By Cunning Author(s) Ruth Rendell Country United Kingdom Language English Series Inspector Wexford #11 Genre(s) Crime, Mystery novel Publisher Hutchinson Publication date 13 April 1981 Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Pages 2007 pp (first edition, hardback) ISBN ISBN 0-09-144120-X (first edition, hardback) OCLC Number 7587626 Dewey Decimal 823/.914 19 LC Classification PR6068.E63 P87 1981 Preceded by The Lake of Darkness Followed by Master of the Moor Put on by Cunning is a novel by British crime-writer Ruth Rendell. It was first published in 1981, and features her popular series protagonist Inspector Wexford. It is the 11th in the series.
The title comes from a quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act V Scene II:
- "How these things came about: so shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters; of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I Truly deliver".
(In the US, the novel was published under the title Death Notes.)
Synopsis
When the esteemed flautist Sir Manuel Camargue slips on a snowy path one dark night and falls into an icy river, his death seems like an open and shut case. However, when Wexford discovers that the old man's long lost daughter has just arrived in anticipation of the reading of his will, suspicions of foul play arise...
Ruth Rendell — The Inspector Wexford Novels From Doon with Death • Wolf to the Slaughter • A New Lease of Death • The Best Man to Die • A Guilty Thing Surprised • No More Dying Then • Murder Being Once Done • Some Lie and Some Die • Shake Hands Forever • A Sleeping Life • Put on by Cunning • The Speaker of Mandarin • An Unkindness of Ravens • The Veiled One • Kissing the Gunner's Daughter • Simisola • Road Rage • Harm Done • The Babes in the Wood • End in Tears • Not in the Flesh • The Monster in the Box • The Vault •
Categories:- British novels
- 1981 novels
- Novels by Ruth Rendell
- Titles derived from the works of William Shakespeare
- Crime novel stubs
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