Put on by Cunning

Celebrity flautist Sir Manuel Camargue dies on a snowy night in Kingsmarkham, and the ruling of misadventure satisfies most of the people involved. Chief Inspector Wexford is not most people. Nineteen years later, when Camargue's daughter and heir Natalie reappears to claim her inheritance, a suspicious fiancé asks Wexford to investigate whether Natalie is who she claims to be. Ruth Rendell builds her eleventh Wexford novel around identity, inheritance, and the question of how thoroughly a person can be remade.

George Baker brings Wexford's seasoned patience and quiet certainty to the narration with absolute authority. The novel's unusual structure, crossing a cold case with a contemporary identity investigation, plays to Baker's ability to hold temporal distance in the voice without losing momentum. At under three hours, Put on by Cunning is one of the more compact Wexford entries and moves with the efficient precision of a writer at the height of her powers.