| Put on By Cunning | |
| Author: | Ruth Rendell |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | Inspector Wexford #11 |
| Genre: | Crime, Mystery novel |
| Publisher: | Hutchinson (UK) Pantheon Books (US) |
| Release Date: | 13 April 1981 |
| Media Type: | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages: | 207 pp |
| Isbn: | 0-09-144120-X |
| Dewey: | 823/.914 19 |
| Congress: | PR6068.E63 P87 1981 |
| Oclc: | 7587626 |
| Preceded By: | A Sleeping Life |
| Followed By: | The Speaker of Mandarin |
Put on by Cunning is a novel by British crime-writer Ruth Rendell.[1] 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.