Devices and Desires

Devices and Desires involves an off-duty trip to the East Anglian countryside for Adam Dalgliesh, the Scotland Yard Commander who is known for his intelligence, photographic memory, and perceptiveness. A local serial killer case is not his responsibility, nor are the seemingly implicated politics of the local nuclear power plant, but Dalgliesh nevertheless becomes involved. This satisfying James effort includes the usual complement of elevated language and memorable phrases. One favorite: the local inspector, thinking about the forensic pathologist, observes, "Reading M.B.'s lucid and comprehensive autopsy reports, he could forgive him even his aftershave." The heart of this crime - and indeed - any crime, is captured by a witness who, show more struggling to understand evil, asks a priest, "Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts?" (The priest, meanwhile, wants to return to his mystery book, because the detective therein "despite his uncertainties, would get there in the end, because this was fiction: problems would be solved, evil overcome, justice vindicated and death itself only a mystery which would be solved in the final chapter.") This is typical James: the "meta" commentary - tongue-in-cheek one presumes - on her own situation. "The dead," says one of James' characters, "have passed beyond the power of words." Luckily, we - her readers - have not.

(JAF) show less

Re-read; first read a fair while ago. Odd. At times I thought I was reading a masterpiece, at times dreck. Tone uneven at the start, oddly bantering. Settles into the mood. Long build-up, acute psychological observation, clicks into gear; some masterly shifting of perspective. Some of the writing is superb. It's also weirdly masculine in places, so much description of all the breasts. The actual central mystery is fairly easily solved and there's a spurious subplot which only adds obvious red herrings. It feels a little unfamiliar to read a book so obviously informed by a Christian, conservative sensibility.

Good solid middle-period P.D. James murder mystery. Lots of East Anglian atmosphere - Norfolk not Suffolk for once - and maybe a bit too much plot, with the standard PDJ theme (murder of an unpleasantly pushy career-woman who’s made an implausible number of enemies) being obfuscated by two other big plot-threads, one about a serial killer and the other about the safety of nuclear power. All very elegantly woven together, in the best possible taste, so that it's difficult even to work up much irritation about the author’s all too familiar right-wing prejudices.

I'm happy to say I didn't guess whodunit; I rarely do. I found the solution satisfying The sentence, softly spoken, "I owed Alex a death." [p. 416], explains it all. and the lack of a discovery of any motive for the Whistler's murders also satisfying. I appreciated James letting the victim die in a moment of grace: she has decided to be decent and kind to two men who have made her life difficult and is looking forward to a happy life; if she had lived, she would have been disappointed and no doubt continue to make life difficult for others.

I hadn't read an Adam Dalgliesh novel in ten years when I started this. I feared I would find it more sobering than entertaining and I was right. P. D. James writes mysteries that have all the qualities of a serious realist novel: grim detail, much of it psychological, little humor, no conscious parody or camp. She is a very facile writer: characters, places, situations, motivations are described in detail in the classic realist manner. She is adequate at mystery and better at suspense. She has here two horrific scenes of violence that are hard to forget. She has one fault I can't stand. Everybody in the book talks like an Eton graduate. When a frigging tramp started talking like everyone, I nearly threw the book against the wall.

James' breakaway from the pure British cozy format. Much better than some of her earlier works. Conveys the horror of violent death on several levels.

A Dalgliesh Cameo in his own Series
Review of the Penguin Canada paperback (1990) [with Notes via the Kindle eBook] of the Faber & Faber hardcover original (1989)

He said: “Am I expected to talk about his poetry?”
“I imagine he’s come to Larksoken to get away from people who want to talk about his poetry. But it wouldn’t hurt you to take a look at it. I’ve got the most recent volume. And it is poetry, not prose rearranged on the page.”
“With modern verse, can one tell the difference?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “If it can be read as prose, then it is prose. It’s an infallible test.” - Alex and Alice Mair discuss the poetry of Adam Dalgliesh.

Adam Dalgliesh* is in Norfolk to settle the affairs of his deceased aunt show more Jane. He has just published his 3rd book of poetry and turns down his publisher's efforts for a publicity campaign and also takes a vacation from his duties at Scotland Yard CID. He does deliver a book proof to Alice Mair, who writes cookbooks for their mutual publisher and is invited to dinner as a result. He meets a varied cast at the dinner including Alex Mair, who runs the local Larksoken Nuclear Power Station. A last guest arrives with news that the local serial killer 'The Whistler' has struck again. All the dinner guests learn certain details of the crime which are not public knowledge.

The Norfolk CID are running 'The Whistler' investigation and although Dalgliesh is sometimes consulted by local Inspector Rickards, he plays no official role. Circumstances then lead to another murder which can only have been done as a 'Whistler' copycat killing. Complications ensue and while Rickards and his assistant latch onto an apparent false solution, Dalgliesh knows that the true criminal is yet to be discovered.

At various times Rickards reveals his resentment of Dalgliesh and there are entertaining diversions in that regard:

... a large oil showing a man with a rifle on a skinny horse, posed in a bleak landscape of sand and scrubland with, in the background, a range of distant mountains. But the man had no head. Instead he was wearing a huge square helmet of black metal with a slit for the eyes. Rickards found the picture disturbingly intimidating. He had a faint memory that he had seen a copy of it, or of something very like it, before, and that the artist was Australian. He was irritated to find himself thinking that Adam Dalgliesh would have known what it was and who had painted it - Inspector Rickards examines a painting in the office of Dr. Alex Mair at Larksoken Nuclear Power Station.

See painting at https://media.nga.gov.au/iN83_LEtMmlxJaPtQGyYbnn2qZ8=/80x89:4102x3097/800x0//nat...
"Ned Kelly" (1946) painted by Sidney Nolan. From the collection of the National Gallery of Australia

So there are unsatisfactory elements to Devices and Desires, especially since Dalgliesh isn't in the central investigative role. James still provides the extensive character backgrounds and developments which she crafted in her late 500 to 700+ page works. The 'false' solution really comes out of nowhere and is barely hinted at in the early stages (some mysterious figures were sighted in the local Abbey ruins), so it does seem a bit of a cheat. I still enjoyed the book though for the variety of characters, the foreboding atmosphere and the descriptions of the Norfolk coast.

See book cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/DevicesAndDesires.jpg
Front cover of the original Faber & Faber hardcover edition (1989). Image sourced from Wikipedia.

I read Devices and Desires as part of my continuing 2022 binge re-read of the P.D. James novels, which I am enjoying immensely. I started the re-reads when I recently discovered my 1980's P.D. James paperbacks while clearing a storage locker.
See photograph at https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FSug6xHWYAERmYI?format=jpg&name=medium
Rescued from storage and due for re-reading, my early P.D. James paperbacks, mostly published by in the 1980s.

Trivia and Links
* In Book 1, Adam Dalgliesh was a Detective Chief Inspector, in Books 2 to 4 he is a Detective Superintendent and in Books 5 to 14 he is a Detective Commander.

Devices and Desires was adapted for television in 1991 as part of the long running Dalgliesh TV-series for Anglia Television/ITV (1983-1998) starring actor Roy Marsden as Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard. You can watch the 6 episodes of the 1991 adaptation starting with Episode 1 on YouTube here.

The new Acorn TV-series reboot Dalgliesh (2021-?) starring Bertie Carver as Adam Dalgliesh has not yet adapted Devices and Desires. Season 1 adapted books 4, 5 & 7. There has not been an announcement of the Season 2 and Season 3 adaptations (as of mid-November 2022). show less