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The latest (and perhaps final) mystery featuring Cmdr. Adam Dalgliesh of the Metropolitan Police Service finds him preparing to confront crucial turning points in his life and career. Meanwhile, he must solve the murder of a ruthlessly inquisitive investigative journalist who was killed in a private Dorset clinic just hours after a pre-eminent plastic surgeon removed her disfiguring facial scar. Dalgliesh and his team unearth a plethora of motives (and an ugly secret or three) as they investigate the inhabitants of the secluded manor that houses the clinic. Rosalyn Landor's lovely, well-bred tones add warmth, color and precision to this fully rounded, compassionately told mystery. She gives every character his or her own voice, clearly delineating gender, age and social class. Her voice combines with James's text to lend sympathy to each character, regardless of what sins he or she may have committed. In every way, this is a perfect auditory experience. A Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 22). (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.A new P.D. James novel feels as if a complex and lovely gift has been bestowed upon the reader. With this 14th novel featuring Adam Dalgliesh, there is a definite sense of closure. Investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn arrives at the beautiful Cheverell Manor in Dorset, owned by famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell, to undergo a relatively routine surgical procedure to remove a facial scar and enjoy a private week of recovery. The next day, after a successful surgery, Rhoda is murdered in her room. Commander Dalgliesh and his usual team, Det. Inspector Kate Miskin and Sgt. Francis Benton-Smith, are summoned. As with any James novel, the manor's inhabitants are an insular, odd group requiring Dalgliesh to unravel a tangled mix of motivations in order to flush out the murderer. The end result is satisfying, if not bittersweet, for both Dalgliesh and the reader. Recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ7/08.]
—Andrea Y. Griffith
Lg. Prt.: 978-0-7393-2820-0
CD 978-0-7393-7691-1
James's 18th novel revisits familiar ground—an insular social setting disrupted by a shocking murder—with consummate artistry.
For 34 years Rhoda Gradwyn has carried the legacy of her father's abuse in the form of a disfiguring facial scar. Now a distinguished investigative journalist, she decides to have it removed because, as she tells Harley Street plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell, "I no longer have need of it." The operation, performed in the surgeon's private clinic in Cheverell Manor, is successful, but it still proves fatal for Rhoda, who's strangled the following night. The murder scene, as usual in James (The Lighthouse, 2005, etc.), is thick with likely suspects and motives. Rhoda's friend Robin Boyton, who recommended the clinic, is convinced that his cousins, assistant surgeon Marcus Westhall and his sister Candace, cheated Robin out of his rightful inheritance. Helena Haverland, the clinic's general administrator, is still smarting over her family's loss of Cheverell Manor to Chandler-Powell. Head nurse Flavia Holland is maddened by spurned love. Kitchen helper Robin Bateman is hiding a dire secret. Nor does anyone seem to mourn a woman who made her living by exposing unsavory secrets. Commander Adam Dalgliesh, called away from a meeting with his prospective father-in-law, and his colleagues uncover a series of red herrings as ritualistically as Hercule Poirot, but with a great deal more psychological nuance, before the killer, who could be practically anyone, is finally unmasked.
Middling work for the peerless James, a whodunit as deeply shadowed by mortality as all Dalgliesh's cases ever since Shroudfor a Nightingale (1971).
First printing of 300,000. Book-of-the-Month Club and Mystery Guild main selections
P. D. James is the author of nineteen previous books, many of which have been adapted for television in the United States; her novel The Children of Men became an internationally successful film in 2006. She spent thirty years in various departments of the British Civil Service, including the Police and Criminal Law Departments of the Home Office. She has served as a magistrate and as a governor of the BBC. In 2000 she celebrated her eightieth birthday and published her autobiography, A Time to Be in Earnest. The recipient of many prizes and honors, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. She lives in London and Oxford.
In James's native Britain (home of Wilkie Collins, Graham Greene, and the redoubtable Agatha Christie), the mystery is a time-honored form that has never been considered inferior. James explained her feelings in a 1998 interview with Salon.com: "It isn't easy to make this division and say: That's genre fiction and it's useless, and this is the so-called straight novel and we take it seriously. Novels are either good novels or they're not good novels, and that is the dividing line for me."
Although she always wanted to be a novelist, James came to writing relatively late in life. Her formal schooling ended at 16, when she went to work to help out her cash-strapped parents. In 1941 she married a doctor assigned to the Royal Army Medical Corps. He returned from WWII with a severe mental illness that lasted until his death in 1964, necessitating that James become the family breadwinner. She worked in hospital administration and then in various departments of the British Civil Service until her retirement in 1979. (Her experience navigating the labyrinthine corridors of government bureaucracies has provided a believable backdrop for many of her books.)
James's first novel, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962. An immediate success, it introduced the first of her two longtime series protagonists -- Adam Dalgleish, a police inspector in Scotland Yard and a published poet. Her second recurring character, a young private detective named Cordelia Gray, debuted in 1972's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. Both Dalgliesh and Cordelia went on to star in a string of international bestsellers.
James has only occasionally departed from her series, most notably for the standalone mystery Innocent Blood (1980) and the dystopian sci-fi classic Children of Men (1992), which was turned into an Oscar-nominated film. In 2000, she published a slender "fragment of autobiography" called A Time to Be Earnest, described by The New York Time Book Review as " deeply moving, and all too short."
On November the twenty-first, the day of her forty-seventh birthday, and three weeks and two days before she was murdered, Rhoda Gradwyn went to Harley Street to keep a first appointment with her plastic surgeon, and there in a consulting room designed, so it appeared, to inspire confidence and allay apprehension, made the decision which would lead inexorably to her death. Later that day she was to lunch at The Ivy. The timing of the two appointments was fortuitous. Mr. Chandler-Powell had no earlier date to offer and the luncheon later with Robin Boyton, booked for twelve-forty-five, had been arranged two months previously; one did not expect to get a table at The Ivy on impulse. She regarded neither appointment as a birthday celebration. This detail of her private life, like much else, was never mentioned. She doubted whether Robin had discovered her date of birth or would much care if he had. She knew herself to be a respected, even distinguished journalist, but she hardly expected her name to appear in theTimes list of VIP birthdays.
She was due at Harley Street at eleven-fifteen. Usually with a London appointment she preferred to walk at least part of the way, but today she had ordered a taxi for ten-thirty. The journey from the City shouldn’t take three-quarters of an hour, but the London traffic was unpredictable. She was entering a world that was strange to her and had no wish to jeopardise her relationship with her surgeon by arriving late for this their first meeting.
Eight years ago she had taken a lease on a house in the City, part of a narrow terrace in a small courtyard at the end of Absolution Alley, near Cheapside, and knew as soon as she moved in that this was the part of London in which she would always choose to live. The lease was long and renewable; she would have liked to buy the house, but knew that it would never be for sale. But the fact that she couldn’t hope to call it entirely her own didn’t distress her. Most of it dated back to the seventeenth century. Many generations had lived in it, been born and died there, leaving behind nothing but their names on browning and archaic leases, and she was content to be in their company. Although the lower rooms with their mullioned windows were dark, those in her study and sitting room on the top storey were open to the sky, giving a view of the towers and steeples of the City and beyond. An iron staircase led from a narrow balcony on the third floor to a secluded roof, which held a row of terra-cotta pots and where on fine Sunday mornings she could sit with her book or newspapers as the Sabbath calm lengthened into midday and the early peace was broken only by the familiar peals of the City bells.
The City which lay below was a charnel house built on multilayered bones centuries older than those which lay beneath the cities of Hamburg or Dresden. Was this knowledge part of the mystery it held for her, a mystery felt most strongly on a bell-chimed Sunday on her solitary exploration of its hidden alleys and squares? Time had fascinated her from childhood, its apparent power to move at different speeds, the dissolution it wrought on minds and bodies, her sense that each moment, all moments past and those to come, were fused into an illusory present which with every breath became the unalterable, indestructible past. In the City of London these moments were caught and solidified in stone and brick, in churches and monuments and in bridges which spanned the grey-brown ever-flowing Thames. She would walk out in spring or summer as early as six o’clock, doublelocking the front door behind her, stepping into a silence more profound and mysterious than the absence of noise. Sometimes in this solitary perambulation it seemed that her own footsteps were muted, as if some part of her were afraid to waken the dead who had walked these streets and had known the same silence. She knew that on summer weekends, a few hundred yards away, the tourists and crowds would soon be pouring over the Millennium Bridge, the laden river steamers would move with majestic clumsiness from their berths, and the public city would become raucously alive.
But none of this business penetrated Sanctuary Court. The house she had chosen could not have been more different from that curttained, claustrophobic semi-detached suburban villa in Laburnum Grove, Silford Green, the East London suburb where she had been born and in which she had spent the first sixteen years of her life. Now she would take the first step on a path which might reconcile her to those years or, if reconciliation were impossible, at least rob them of their destructive power.
It was now eight-thirty and she was in her bathroom. Turning off the shower, she moved, towel-wrapped, to the mirror over the washbasin. She put out her hand and smoothed it over the steam-smeared glass and watched her face appear, pale and anonymous as a smudged painting. It was months since she had deliberately touched the scar. Now, slowly and delicately, she ran a fingertip down its length, feeling the silver shininess at its heart, the hard bumpy outline of its edge. Placing her left hand over her cheek, she tried to imagine the stranger who, in a few weeks’ time, would look into the same mirror and see a doppelgänger of herself, but one incomplete, unmarked, perhaps with only a thin white line to show where this puckered crevice had run. Gazing at the image, which seemed no more than a faint palimpsest of her former self, she began slowly and deliberately to demolish her carefully constructed defences and let the turbulent past, first like a swelling stream and then a river in spate, break through unresisted and take possession of her mind.
2
She was back in that small rear room, both kitchen and sitting room, in which she and her parents colluded in their lies and endured their voluntary exile from life. The front room, with its bay window, was for special occasions, for family celebrations never held and for visitors who never came, its silence smelling faintly of lavender furniture polish and stale air, an air so portentous that she tried never to breathe it. She was the only child of a frightened and ineffective mother and a drunken father. That was how she had defined herself for more than thirty years and how she still defined herself. Her childhood and adolescence had been circumscribed by shame and guilt. Her father’s periodic bouts of violence were unpredictable. No school friends could safely be brought home, no birthday or Christmas parties arranged and, since no invitations were ever given, none was received. The grammar school to which she went was single-sex and friendships between the girls were intense. A special mark of favour was to be invited to spend the night at a friend’s house. No guest ever slept at 239 Laburnum Grove. The isolation didn’t worry her. She knew herself to be more intelligent than her fellows and was able to persuade herself that she had no need of a companionship which would be intellectually unsatisfying and which she knew would never be offered.
It was eleven-thirty on a Friday, the night her father got paid, the worst day of the week. And now there came the sound she dreaded, the sharp closing of the front door. He came blundering in and she saw her mother move in front of the armchair, which Rhoda knew would awaken his fury. It was to be her father’s chair. He had chosen it and paid for it, and it had been delivered that morning. Only after the van had left had her mother discovered it was the wrong colour. It would have to be changed, but there had been no time before the shop closed. She knew that her mother’s querulous, apologetic, half-whining voice would enrage him, that her own sullen presence would help neither of them, but she couldn’t go up to bed. The noise of what would happen beneath her room would be more terrifying than to be part of it. And now the room was full of him, his blundering body, the stink of him. Hearing his bellow of outrage, his ranting, she felt a sudden spurt of fury, and with it came courage. She heard herself saying, “It isn’t Mother’s fault. The chair was wrapped up when the man left it. She couldn’t see it was the wrong colour. They’ll have to change it.”
And then he turned on her. She couldn’t recall the words. Perhaps at the time there had been no words, or she hadn’t heard them. There was only the crack of the smashed bottle, like a pistol shot, the stink of whisky, a moment of searing pain which passed almost as soon as she felt it and the warm blood flowing from her cheek, dripping onto the seat of the chair, her mother’s anguished cry. “Oh God, look what you’ve done, Rhoda. The blood! They’ll never take it back now. They’ll never change it.”
Her father gave her one look before stumbling out and hauling himself up to bed. In the seconds in which their eyes met, she thought she saw a confusion of emotions: bafflement, horror and disbelief. Then her mother finally turned her attention to her child. Rhoda had been trying to hold the edges of the wound together, the blood sticky on her hands. Her mother fetched towels and a packet of sticking plasters and tried with shaking hands to open it, her tears mixing with the blood. It was Rhoda who gently took the packet from her, unpeeled the plasters from their covers and managed at last to close most of the wound. By the time, less than an hour later, she was lying stiffly in bed, the bleeding had been staunched and the future mapped out. There would be no visit to the doctor and no truthful explanation ever; she would stay away from school for a day or two, her mother would telephone, saying she was unwell. And when she did go back, her story would be ready: she had crashed against the edge of the open kitchen door.
And now the sharp-edged memory of that single slashing moment softened into the more mundane recollection of the following years. The wound, which became badly infected, healed painfully and slowly, but neither parent spoke of it. Her father had always found it difficult to meet her eyes; now he hardly ever came near her. Her classmates averted their gaze, but it seemed to her that fear had replaced active dislike. No one at school ever mentioned the disfigurement in her presence until she was in the sixth form and was sitting with her English mistress, who was trying to persuade her to try for Cambridge—her own university—instead of London. Without looking up from her papers, Miss Farrell had said, “Your facial scar, Rhoda. It’s wonderful what plastic surgeons can do today. Perhaps it would be sensible to make an appointment with your GP before you go up.” Their eyes hadmet, Rhoda’s mutinous with outrage, and after four seconds of silence, Miss Farrell, cringing in her chair, her face an angry rash of mottled scarlet, had bent again to her papers. She began to be treated with wary respect. Neither dislike nor respect worried her. She had her own private life, an interest in findingout what others kept hidden, in making discoveries. Probing into other people’s secrets became a lifelong obsession, the substratum and directionof her whole career. She became a stalker of minds. Eighteen years after she had left Silford Green, the suburb had been enthralledby a notorious murder. She had studied the grainy pictures of victim and killer in the papers with no particular interest. The killer confessed within days, was taken away, the case closed. As an investigative journalist, by now becoming increasingly successful, she was interested less by Silford Green’s brief notoriety than by her own more subtle and more lucrative and fascinating lines of enquiry.
She had left home on her sixteenth birthday and found a bed-sit in the next suburb. Every week until he died her father sent her a fivepound note. She never acknowledged it but took the money because she needed it to supplement the cash she earned in the evenings and at weekends working as a waitress, telling herself that it was probably less than her food would have cost at home. When, five years later, with a first in history and established in her first job, her mother phoned to say that her father had died, she felt an absence of emotion that paradoxically seemed stronger and more irksome than regret. He had been found drowned, slumped in an Essex stream whose name she could never remember, with an alcohol level in his blood which proved that he had been intoxicated. The coroner’s verdict of accidental death was expected and, she thought, probably correct. It was the one she had hoped for. She told herself, not without a small flicker of shame which quickly died, that suicide would have been too rational and momentousa final judgement on such an ineffectual life.
Beyond the well developed characters and the interesting plot line of this book, P.D. James is a truly talented writer and a joy to read. The book was mentally comfortable from page one to completion and I, personally, intend to begin a collection of her writings. I'm sorry it's taken so long for us to become acquainted. The "Private Patient" had its delightful share of twists and turns, but none so outrageous that the story didn't have a natural flow that allowed me to personally assist Commander Adam Dalgliesh throughout his investigation. Once begun...I found it difficult to put this down...and found myself rushing to complete my daily chores so I could rejoin the investigation.
7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 13, 2010
The characters are not fully developed as individuals rather than types, but the plot holds interest. The story is original within the genre but still within the Agatha Christie "closed House and limited suspects" where all the characters might have a motive. I always enjoy reading about Adam Dalgliesh and would like more details about him.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.If The Private Patient is truly PDJ's final Dalgliesh novel, she's taking him out in style! AD has always been the most human, humane, and cultured of the detective genre, and at long last, he's gained some well deserved happiness. Although most of his cases have been firmly closed at the end of each story, in this one, James has left some wiggle room. This is a fine police procedural/human interest story, as beautifully written and atmospheric as we've come to expect from her. Five stars for yet another thoroughly enjoyed little masterpiece.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 21, 2009
I enjoyed reading this book. Although I have liked all of the previous Dalgliesh books, I've always felt that AD and his associates could stand a few doses of Prozac. While the regular cast was introspective, they didn't seem to be suffering from depression this time.
The story was compelling and held my attention. As an American, it was an interesting insight into medical practice in the UK.
Good ending either as a series finale or to take advantage of that wiggle room James left for a future novel.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 23, 2009
I love P.D James. I love the way she transforms mystery into a literary experience, but having said that, this latest book is not her best. It is still a wonderful read, but the plot is not as compelling as her other books. I found that I quickly forgot the book after reading it.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 15, 2008
What can be a better setting for a murder mystery than a secluded old house and a limited number of characters with motive and access to the victim? Unfortunately, setting isn't everything. PD James characters are usually well crafted and the plots intricate. However, this story was sidelined, as have been several of her recent books, by references to the Dalgliesh-Emma romance. Enough already. The romance seems contrived and superficial and slows down the pace of the plot.
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.In Dorset, forty-seven years old investigative reporter Rhoda Gradwyn arrives at Cheverell Manor, a facility converted into a plastic surgery clinic by renowned surgeon Dr. George Chandler Powell. Rhoda is there for personal reasons to have an ugly facial scar removed. Two days later, Rhoda is dead.<BR/><BR/>Police Commander Adam Dalgliesh heads the investigation into the homicide of the journalist. He and his unit quickly find suspects at clinic, whose motives seem weird especially if any of them killed a virtual stranger. Confused by what they are learning, Adam also reaches out to the wider more likely fruitful focus of looking at those involved with Gradwyn¿s work as she was notorious for figuratively torturing the truth from reluctant individuals and then selling it to the highest bidder. One of the seemingly zillion including the staff at the clinic is a killer, but who took advantage of the opportunity remains far from being resolved even as the inquiry spins further out of control towards a three century plus old execution and a second apparently unrelated murder occurs at the clinic.<BR/><BR/>As always in the excellent Dalgliesh police procedurals, this great entry (perhaps the best of the long running saga) P.D. James interweaves her take on social issues into a terrific whodunit; nobody does it better than she does. The case is complex as suspects surface more than rabbits multiply while Dalgliesh learns either the clinic staff or the late reporter were interested in the graying of Great Britain, the failing restricted higher education system that exclude late blooming geniuses and immigrants, and the inconvenient truth of humans goring the planet; all cleverly interwoven into the plot. However, make no mistake the superb police investigation is the focus of the storyline as THE PRIVATE PATIENT is a fabulous ¿locked room¿ mystery with an endless sea of suspects.<BR/><BR/>Harriet Klausner
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 8, 2012
Fan of james for many years but i found the read to be a very slow go
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This is only my second PDJ novel and my first of the Dalgliesh series. But having read a lot of English mysteries, I understand the catch-up work required when stepping in at the 14th volume of a series. So I didn't expect to understand all the nuances of the recurring characters. Despite this, it was apparent that James is becoming fatigued with Dalgliesh books. Who can blame her after fourteen volumes? The main character is a writer - a sure sign that an author has run out of occupations for her protagonist. Stephen King is guilty of this tired ploy. (How many of King's main characters are writers?) It takes a lot more effort to write a character whose profession you are unfamiliar with, a scuba diver or a neurosurgeon. Easier to just write about yourself. More evidence of enui is the sudden avalanche of "revelations" right at the end. Having spent hundreds of pages meandering around scattering clues James seems to realize she needs to resolve them before she hits her deadline. The antagonist suddenly(!) makes a lengthy confession at the end tying up every loose end. Then to make it even easier, the bad guy off's himself so there's no need to bother writing a complicated chase scene. Ta Da! Along the way, James dazzles with her beautiful prose. She is a terrific writer, despite her fondness for describing in minute detail every tea service on the British Isles. (I am an American, but lived in England for a year, so I know that real Britons don't care nearly this much about their milk jugs. Just saying.) Her ability to build three dimensional characters is really stunning. It makes me want to go back and read the early Dalgliesh novels, when James was still fresh.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 14, 2010
Don't buy it-its not worth the paper its printed on.
1 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 20, 2010
It kept my interest from the beginning and led me to a conclusion unexpected. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good story, not just mystery lovers.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 9, 2010
I re-discovered PD James with this novel. Had read 1 of her novels years ago & remembered I had enjoyed it. All characters are well developed & the "mystery" involved always holds your attention. Her central character, Detective Adam Dalgliesh, is superb. Went out & bought 2 more books from this series. Also feel her use of language is part of the overall appeal of her books.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I was sorry that some reviewers had trouble with the wordiness of the book, but this is characteristic of the author. If you're looking for a cozy village mystery to be finished in an afternoon, her books are not for you! This novel, like her others, unfolds slowly, with plenty of character development and setting detail. I gave this four stars instead of five only because I found the resolution of the mystery a bit murky. But the journey through the book was still worth the read!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 17, 2009
Typical PD James style and substance. Similar to The Lighthouse in feel and overall a good read.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 16, 2009
PD James remains in fine form in this murder mystery. As usual, in her books the interior life is every bit as important as the exterior one and while I did not find the "who done it" too much of a challenge, I appreciated the leisurely pace of the book. (I only wish she had turned more of an eye to countryside descriptions of the beautiful Dorset area)
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.London born actress Rosalyn Landor is the perfect choice to read a P. D. James mystery. The daughter of an actor/broadcaster Landor grew up with reading aloud, story telling, and that love for the spoken word is reflected in her voice performances. Her readings are well modulated, precise as she carries listeners along to what is in this case a surprising denouement.<BR/><BR/> What lover of mysteries has not read or at least heard of P.D. James? The author of 19 books she spent some 30 years in the British Civil Service and recently celebrated her 88th birthday. One of her many gifts to readers is the creation of Commander Adam Dalgliesh, a consummate investigator who is often given to Holmesian discussions as he presents his thoughts to various characters and suspects.<BR/><BR/> With The Private Patient we visit an impressive old house, Cheverell Manor in Dorset. Once a family home it was sold of necessity to an eminent plastic surgeon, George H. Chandler-Powell, who now operates it as a clinic for the privileged. Rhoda Gradwyn comes to him for the removal of a disfiguring facial scar. She's an investigative journalist (her work is similar to that of a reporter for a supermarket tabloid in the USA). She's with us only briefly as she's soon dead of strangulation, a murder committed by an unknown person wearing latex gloves.<BR/><BR/> While the crime most definitely has affected Rhoda, it also affects the good doctor as who would want to come to a clinic where a murder has just occurred? Commander Dalgliesh is summoned to investigate. He has a great deal to look into considering the clinic staff, the departed's boyfriend, and others who were a part of her life for good or ill.<BR/><BR/> Once again James treats us to her vivid descriptions of setting and extensive vocabulary - the perfect word for every thought and situation. A pleasure to read - do so slowly and savor this author's unique style.<BR/><BR/> - Gail Cooke
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 12, 2013
5 stars
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Posted December 11, 2012
I have to say that this was the worst book i have ever read!!! Had to force myself to finish it. The writing was horrible and so was the overall story. This was the first AND last book I will ever read from this author!!! Do not waste your time or money on this book.
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Posted March 21, 2010
Original plot or so I believed. Beautiful descriptions of countryside and abodes. Far too many charcters who are related currently and prior generations. Found it difficult to remember who was who and who was related to whom in what lifetime.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 20, 2010
I always look forward to reading a new PD James mystery as I know it's a trip to a more civilized place. Her plot/characters/setting are all intelligent and somewhat refined. There's a feeling I get reading her books that follows me through the day, not criminal but thoughtful. I love her books and this was no exception. I rarely figure it out ahead of time and never read the ending first...unusual for me. I'm ready for the next one.
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Overview