To Fear a Painted Devil
1965 novel by Ruth Rendell
To Fear a Painted Devil is a novel by British writer Ruth Rendell published in 1965 by John Long Ltd in the UK and Doubleday in the US. Her second book, it is a stand-alone crime thriller in which "there is less reliance on suspense and the main focus is on the motivation of the murderer". There is also a social preoccupation, with interacting characters drawn from many strata of society.
The title of the novel alludes to a passage from Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth chides her husband, who has just killed the king: "Tis the eye of childhood / That fears a painted devil". In terms of Rendell's plot, it refers to Patrick Selby's association of seeing the picture of the beheaded John the Baptist with the time he suffered a near-fatal bee sting, as related in the prologue.
Setting
Henry Glide had bought the grounds of the former Linchester Manor for development. At first he built three modest chalet-style bungalows, now divided by a band of trees from the more up-market houses lived in by commuting Nottingham businessmen and built around a central green with a pond. At the edge of the development is a strip of woodland, beyond which are the converted 18th century almshouses in which lives Crispin Marvell, son of the former estate owner, who spends his time raising bees and trying to finish writing a history of the estate.
The most prosperous property is a modernistic house called The Hallows, where Patrick Selby lives with his wife (and first cousin), the empty-headed Tamsin. Patrick has earned the dislike of most of the people at Linchester. To begin with, there is Tamsin herself, over whom he domineers and whose affair with one resident he has broken up, although at the same time conducting an affair himself with another.
The public source identifies “To Fear a Painted Devil” as 1965 novel by Ruth Rendell. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fear, Painted and Devil.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7810925. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965.
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This entry incorporates text from “To Fear a Painted Devil” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.