P. D. James (1920–2014)

Dalgliesh tries to find time for a new love interest, as he leads the investigation into a gruesome murder of one of the trustees of a family museum. Interesting characters (although one or two of them are slightly stock-y), lots of threads to untangle. The clearest motivations are not necessarily the ones to trust, of course, but I thought James dropped a sneaky clue near the beginning, especially when chapters and chapters went by without much attention being paid to that particular show more possibility. Naturally I was all wrong. I've never yet figured her out, and that's the fun of it. show less

Cordelia Gray Bumbles through in Second Outing
Review of the Sphere Books paperback edition (1983/1986 reprint) of the Faber & Faber hardcover original (1982)

She guarded her privacy. None of her friends and no one from the Agency had ever been in the flat. Adventures occurred elsewhere. She knew that if any man shared that narrow bed for her it would mean commitment. There was only one man she ever pictured there and he was a Commander of New Scotland Yard. She knew that he, too, lived in the

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City, they shared the same river. But she told herself that the brief madness was over, that at a time of stress and frightening insecurity she had only been seeking her lost father-figure. There was this to be said for a smattering of amateur psychology: it enabled one to exorcise memories which might otherwise be embarrassing.

It was not a good sign when the nameless cameo of P.D. James' regular detective character Commander Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard CID was one of the most intriguing aspects of the second outing of her private detective character Cordelia Gray. Following a 10-year hiatus after 1972's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Cordelia Gray returns in a case which promises gothic intrigue and dramatic revenge but which falls flat and leaves one forced to tag it with an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert ™.

The Pryde Detective Agency is moderately successful and Gray has even hired two office assistants to help with paperwork and research. The caseload is dominated however by the search for lost pets. A more serious case appears when Cordelia is hired by Sir George Ralston to be a bodyguard-companion to his wife, the actress Clarissa Lisle, on a weekend outing to Courcy Island. The actress has been the nervous subject of a disturbing poison pen letter campaign and her career has suffered as a consequence. She hopes that a staging of John Webster's Jacobean-era revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi (1614) with an amateur theatrical company at Courcy Island's restored Victorian era theatre will be the start of a late career revival.

See cover image at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/TheSkullBeneathTheSkin.jpg
Front cover of the original Faber & Faber hardcover edition (1982). Image sourced from Wikipedia.

Although the gothic atmosphere of Courcy Island and its rather foreboding history of deaths from the bubonic plague through to World War II prisoner of war internments is well described, the supposed investigation is rather weak. Gray does just about nothing for 80% of the book which of course results in fatal consequences for her client. She is then finally fired up to chase down what at first appears to be an insignificant press cutting reviewing an earlier Clarissa Lisle performance. The press cutting proves to be the key to the solution of the case, but instead of alerting the authorities, Gray proceeds to bumble through and almost gets herself killed. In the denouement we learn that justice will probably not even prevail. In the end, Cordelia returns to the cat and dog investigations.

There were no further Cordelia Gray private detective books to be had from P.D. James.

Trivia and No Link
The Skull Beneath the Skin has had no TV or theatrical film adaptations made to date as of this writing mid-August 2022. show less

There has been a lot of fuss about this new hybrid Austenuation/murder mystery - which I obviously fell for, hook, line and sinker - because P.D. James has been writing crime novels since Caxton was a lad, but unfortunately, I found Death Comes to Pemberley rather a disappointment. Falling between two stools, James' ode to Austen lacks the right measure of domestic felicity at Pemberley to satisfy the Pride and Prejudice groupies (of which I am not one), and at the same time fails to provide show more a meaty mystery for readers of her own genre. In fact, the last minute confession is almost insulting - I was hoping for another twist in the tale, but that was that.

The opening chapters are promising - six years on from the double Darcy/Bingley wedding, and Elizabeth is firmly ensconced as mistress of Pemberley, with two young sons, and her sister Jane lives happily nearby with Bingley and their three children. We are told that Darcy and Elizabeth are deeply in love and content with married life, even though Darcy still has doubts about marrying into the Bennet family and acquiring Wickham as a brother-in-law and Elizabeth possibly only married Darcy for his money, but since the Darcys hold but one intimate conversation, and that one a rehash of the plot of P+P in the final chapter, we have to take the author's word for it. Still, Darcy and Elizabeth behave very properly like the master and mistress of Pemberley, remembering the names of servants and visiting the children in the nursery once a day.

All is well, until the dark and stormy night before Lady Anne's ball, a Pemberley tradition. After an evening of stultifying boredom with the Bingleys, their house guest and Georgiana's suitor, Henry Alveston, and Colonel Fitzwilliam (who is now a miserable viscount), Lydia Wickham bowls up to the front door in a carriage, screaming blue murder. Literally. She claims that her husband has been shot, but when Darcy, the colonel and Alveston go into the 'haunted' wood - where Darcy's great grandfather killed his ailing dog and himself in his hermit's cottage - to investigate, they discover that Wickham is not the victim after all, but the suspected killer of his best friend, Captain Denny.

The mystery plods on from there - the 'police' arrive (or rather, two parish constables and a magistrate, but James insists on using the modern term), Wickham is taken away, an inquest follows, and then the trial. In London. Despite the fact that the murder took place in Derbyshire. Only the suspense of what really happened and why was keeping me hanging on - and then James ruins the whole story, with a pathetic 'confession' and pages of tenuous exposition. Without giving the game away for readers who haven't even opened the book, the whole tangled thread made little sense, apart from showing that Wickham is still a very bad boy in one way or another.

And I have other questions - why no children for Lydia and Wickham, who apparently isn't loaded with blanks? How, if the story is set in late 1803/1804 - following on from the contemporary date when Austen finished writing Pride and Prejudice - do the Elliots of Persuasion and the Martins and Knightleys of Emma make cameo appearances in the backstory when both novels were set ten years later?

James captures the narrative style of Austen, and gets the sardonic humour right on occasion, but the mystery falls flat. For a more successful spin on the same premise, read Carrie Bebris' Mr and Mrs Darcy series, which combine the light and loving touch of the Darcys and the Nick and Nora approach to armchair detection, with far more verve and affection than this miserable attempt. show less

It is a while since I’ve read any PD James, why did I leave it so long? Reading an Adam Dalgliesh story is like slipping into a favourite pair of old jeans. It’s that feeling you get with an assured author: you are in safe hands. It is mutual trust. The author trusts the reader to make connections and ‘get’ references without having to spell everything out, the reader trusts the author to deliver a satisfying story without distractions of blind alleys. This applies, especially I show more think, to crime fiction.
I have read ‘A Certain Justice’ before, many years ago, my paperback is old. I remembered the character of Venetia Aldridge, the murder victim, and of course know detective Adam Dalgliesh, but I had forgotten the identity of the killer. One of the pleasures of a PD James novel for me is the cultural background and the depth of knowledge she demonstrates. Dalgliesh is a poet, he is fond of architecture, of music, of the countryside. The murder of Venetia Aldridge, a barrister, takes place in her Chambers, and so as the reader I became involved in the world of law, of trial by jury, of guilty v not guilty, of revenge, of abandonment, hate and lingering resentment.
James takes her time to establish the characters involved, Venetia Aldridge herself, but also everyone around her, the other lawyers, her colleagues in Chambers, her daughter, and the people involved in her recent trials. A PD James crime novel is not short, but each character sketch is a potential murderer, accomplice, witness or, another murder victim. So it pays for the reader to pay attention. James is a master storyteller.
If you haven’t discovered PD James or her series featuring Adam Dalgliesh, a treat awaits you.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ show less