Review: SLEEP NO MORE, P.D. James

• this edition published by Faber & Faber 2017
• ISBN 978-0-571-33087-7
• 172 pages
• short stories

Synopsis (publisher)

The acknowledged 'Queen of Crime', P. D. James, was a past master of the short story, weaving together motifs of the Golden Age of crime-writing with deep psychological insight to create gripping, suspenseful tales. The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories contained four of these perfectly formed stories, and this companion volume contains a further six, published here together for the first time.

As the six murderous tales unfold, the dark motive of revenge is revealed at the heart of each. Bullying schoolmasters receive their comeuppance, unhappy marriages and childhoods are avenged, a murder in the small hours of Christmas Day puts an end to the vicious new lord of the manor, and, from the safety of his nursing home, an octogenarian exerts exquisite retribution.

The punishments inflicted on the guilty are fittingly severe, but here they are meted out by the unseen forces of natural justice rather than the institutions of the law. Once again, P. D. James shows her expert control of the short-story form, conjuring motives and scenarios with complete conviction, and each with a satisfying twist in the tail.

My Take

Here is a handful of very clever short stories, each with a good twist in the tail, which often took me by surprise, revealing a culprit that I hadn't suspected, even though, on looking back all the clues were there.

Mostly the stories were 20-30 pages long, easily conquered in a sitting, and very well crafted. Make no mistake - I think the short story is incredibly difficult to pull off, because everything has to tie in, there must be no loose threads. The ending must be believable and complete.

Highly recommended.
 
My rating: 4.5

I've also read
THE PRIVATE PATIENT
4.5, TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION
4.7, THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN
4.5, DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS
4.3, THE MISTLETOE MURDER

Forgotten Book: A MIND TO MURDER, P.D. James

My plan this year for my contributions to Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Pattinase   is to feature books I read 20 years ago - in 1993- from the records I have in my "little green book", which I started in 1975.
In 1993 I read 111 books and was pretty well addicted to crime fiction by then.

My choice today was published just 50 years ago in 1963, #2 in the Inspector Dalgliesh series. I read it just 20 years ago yesterday.

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction).

When the administrative head of the Steen Psychiatric Clinic is found dead with a chisel in her heart, Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate. Dalgliesh must analyze the deep-seated anxieties and thwarted desires of patients and staff alike to determine which of their unresolved conflicts resulted in murder.

With "discernment, depth, and craftsmanship," wrote the Chicago Daily News, A Mind to Murder "is a superbly satisfying mystery."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I find it remarkable that this series is now over 50 years old. They seem so modern in style when you pick one up and read it these days.

Inspector Adam Dalgliesh
1. Cover Her Face (1962)
2. A Mind to Murder (1963)
3. Unnatural Causes (1967)
4. Shroud for a Nightingale (1971)
5. The Black Tower (1975)
6. Death of an Expert Witness (1977)
7. A Taste for Death (1986)
8. Devices and Desires (1989)
9. Original Sin (1994)
10. A Certain Justice (1997)
11. Death in Holy Orders (2001)
12. The Murder Room (2003)
13. The Lighthouse (2005)
14. The Private Patient (2008)

Forgotten Book: SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE, P.D. James

My little green book

My plan this year for my contributions to Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Pattinase is to feature books I read 20 years ago - in 1993- from the records I have in my "little green book", which I started in 1975. In 1993 I read 111 books and was pretty well addicted to crime fiction by then.

My choice this week is SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE by P. D. James, published in 1971.

This is #4 in James's Adam Dalgliesh series.

Synopsis (Amazon)

The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed.

Another student dies equally mysteriously, and it is up to Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard to unmask a killer who has decided to prescribe murder as the cure for all ills.

Inspector Adam Dalgliesh series (Fantastic Fiction)
1. Cover Her Face (1962)
2. A Mind to Murder (1963)
3. Unnatural Causes (1967)
4. Shroud for a Nightingale (1971)
5. The Black Tower (1975)
6. Death of an Expert Witness (1977)
7. A Taste for Death (1986)
8. Devices and Desires (1989)
9. Original Sin (1994)
10. A Certain Justice (1997)
11. Death in Holy Orders (2001)
12. The Murder Room (2003)
13. The Lighthouse (2005)
14. The Private Patient (2008)

P.D. James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL, is now 92, just a little younger than my mother, and has not added to the Dalgliesh series for about 5 years and we must assume that there will be no more. The Dalgliesh series was published over a period of 46 years, with the first COVER HER FACE  appearing just over 50 years ago.

Her two most recent publications were Death Comes to Pemberley (2011) and Talking about Detective Fiction (2009), both remarkable achievements when you consider her age.

Crime Fiction Alphabet 2012 - X is for EXPERT WITNESS

I've decided that for the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme this year I will try to feature books I've read in 2012.

So this week the letter X was a real challenge and I've decided to feature DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS by P.D. James, which I recently re-read  as an audio book.

Synopsis

When a young girl is found strangled in a field, it looks like a routine job for the staff of the East Anglian Forensic Laboratory. But then the senior biologist is found dead in his lab and murder comes closer to home. And Commander Adam Dalgliesh faces the most baffling inquiry of his career.

My take

DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS is the perfect illustration of what took P.D. James to the top of British crime fiction. Characters are clearly defined, plotting is convoluted but tight, motives are hidden, and red herrings abound.  More

Check what others have chosen in Crime Fiction Alphabet this week for the letter X.

Review: THE PRIVATE PATIENT, P.D. James

faber and faber, 2008, 395 pages, ISBN 978-0-571-24244-3

We know right from the start of this novel that 47 year old Rhoda Gradwyn is only 23 days away from being murdered. She has decided to have a leading plastic surgeon remove a disfiguring facial scar that she has had for over 30 years. She goes to the surgeon's private clinic at Cheverell Manor in Dorset to have the operation. The operation is a success, but only hours later Rhoda Gradwyn is dead, throttled.

This is an Adam Dalgleish book and James' fans have been waiting since the publication of THE LIGHTHOUSE in 2005 for the next. We are reminded of that book several times by the investigative team. THE LIGHTHOUSE was a variant on the closed room mystery: an island cut off from the mainland by bad weather with seemingly no-one coming and going, so the murderer had to be on the island. (see my mini-review: my rating was 5.0)

What we have in THE PRIVATE PATIENT it seems is a variant of the same sort of scenario, only this time using an English country house as the backdrop. Cheverell Manor isn't quite as isolated as Combe Island was, but the list of possible perpetrators is limited. Many in the cast of characters have secrets to hide, the Manor itself was locked at the pertinent times, but there is a local legend about the nearby standing stones, just to complicate things.

The thing that struck me most about THE PRIVATE PATIENT is how thoroughly it was plotted. I found it slow reading but I didn't grudge the time. P. D. James takes care of all her characters. Adam Dalgliesh is on the brink of marriage, and it seems that he is also on the cusp of a career change, with every likelihood that his Murder Squad will be redeployed after this case is finalised. Kate Miskin is due for promotion in the very near future, very likely to head her own team. James explores not only the relationships between the residents of Cheverell Manor, but also the way in which the members of Dalgliesh's team work together.

So, yes, THE PRIVATE PATIENT is a very satisfying read, P.D. James still among the best.

My rating: 4.9

Remarkably James is now 88 years old, and this is the 14th in the Adam Dalgliesh series. The series began 46 years ago, and James chose not to age Dalgliesh in "real time", and thus avoided the problems that Ian Rankin and Ruth Rendell have had to face with their aging detectives.

Nevertheless we could be forgiven for wondering if Dalgliesh will make a 15th appearance. I hope so.

The following list is courtesy of Fantastic Fiction.
1. Cover Her Face (1962)
2. A Mind to Murder (1963)
3. Unnatural Causes (1967)
4. Shroud for a Nightingale (1971)
5. The Black Tower (1975)
6. Death of an Expert Witness (1977)
7. A Taste for Death (1986)
8. Devices and Desires (1989)
9. Original Sin (1994)
10. A Certain Justice (1997)
11. Death in Holy Orders (2001)
12. The Murder Room (2003)
13. The Lighthouse (2005)
14. The Private Patient (2008)

Progress reports - various books

I have been "reading" 3 books recently and am not likely to finish any of them this side of Christmas so my post today is a progress report.

I've been faithfully reading Alexander McCall Smith's online novel CORDUROY MANSIONS for 14 weeks now. There are 6 weeks to go.
Today the Telegraph has changed the way you access the book, particularly the audio part. The result is that, rather inconveniently, the widget that I have running on Crime Fiction Journeys now takes you to the home page of the Telegraph, not to the exact page of the chapter you've chosen. So then you have to locate the link to CORDUROY MANSIONS. Once you get there, they have changed the chapter layout, and it is not easy to locate the audio file you've gone there to listen to. Grrr..
The book (or rather Alexander himself we are told) is taking a 2 week break and will resume on January 5. I hope they've reinstated the old system by then.
Am I enjoying the book? As I've commented before I'm enjoying listeningto Andrew Sachs reading each chapter, but I'm not quite sure where the book is heading. You'd think that, 2/3 of the way through, I'd have more idea wouldn't you?

For the last week I've been listening to Matthew Reilly's SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS in the car to and from work. There are 11 CDs with over 13 hours and I'm in the middle of CD 3, so I'll be a while yet. If you want to read a blurb, here's the one on Fantastic Fiction.
Basically it is a thriller where opposing forces are looking for pieces of gold that basically make up the golden capstone of the Great Pyramid. It a race against time to save the world from a cataclysm that will be caused by a sunspot on the Sun's surface.
It is not my usual style of "reading", rather a thriller that makes me feel like I'm inside an action game, a bit like World of Warcraft or a Dungeons and Dragons one. There's a lot of description, and for the first hour at least falling stones, great dangers, boiling lakes of tar and so on.
Reilly has rather disconcertingly begun the book with the search for the first piece, and then regressed 10 years to tell us why this is all happening.
I hope I don't forget too much in the 10 days I'm having off from work.

The third book is THE PRIVATE PATIENT by P.D. James. We know right from the start of this novel that 47 year old Rhoda Gradwyn is only 23 days away from being murdered. She has decided to have a leading plastic surgeon remove a disfiguring facial scar that she has had for over 30 years. She goes to the surgeon's private clinic at Cheverell Manor in Dorset to have the operation. Indeed the operation is a success, but only hours later Rhoda Gradwyn is dead, throttled.

This is an Adam Dalgleish book and James' fans have been waiting since the publication of THE LIGHTHOUSE in 2005 for the next. We are reminded of that book several times by the investigative team. THE LIGHTHOUSE was a variant on the closed room mystery: an island cut off from the mainland by bad weather with seemingly no-one coming and going, so the murderer had to be on the island. (see my mini-review below: my rating was 5.0)

What we have in THE PRIVATE PATIENT it seems is a variant of the same sort of scenario, only this time using an English country house as the backdrop. Cheverell Manor isn't quite as isolated as Combe Island was, but the list of possible perpetrators is limited. Many in the cast of characters have secrets to hide, the Manor itself was locked at the pertinent times, but there is a local legend about the nearby standing stones, just to complicate things.

THE LIGHTHOUSE (2005)
Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is violated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered.
Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called in to solve the mystery quickly and discreetly, but at a difficult time for him and his depleted team. Dalgliesh is uncertain about his future with Emma Lavenham, the woman he loves; Detective Inspector Kate Miskin has her own emotional problems; and the ambitious Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith is worried about working under Kate. Hardly has the team begun to unravel the complicated motives of the suspects than there is a second brutal killing, and the whole investigation is jeopardized when Dalgliesh is faced with a danger more insidious and as potentially fatal as murder.

Locked-Off Murders

Inspired by fellow blogger Petrona whose latest posting is about "island novels", I decided to investigate my mini-reviews for different sorts of isolation. I've come up with 11 murder mysteries that I've read in the last 3 years or so, that are really variations on the "locked-room" scenario.

On an island

THE LIGHTHOUSE, P.D. James, my rating 5.0
Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is violated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered.

PIG ISLAND, Mo Hayder, my rating 4.8
Journalist Joe Oakes makes his living exposing supernatural hoaxes. The video of the 'the devil of Pig Island' has been around for a couple of years and Joe is absolutely sure that it is a hoax. Rumours of Satanic rituals taking place on Pig Island still proliferate, particularly among the mainland locals who resent the fact that the island is no longer open to them. The secretive religious group that lives on the island invites Joe to stay with them on the island for a week to see how the community lives. That dreadful events occur on Pig Island seems confirmed by two pieces of evidence that Joe can check for himself: a dreadful smell apparent when the wind blows from that quarter, and decaying chunks of flesh that constantly drift from the island to the mainland.

RAVEN BLACK, Ann Cleeves, my rating 4.6
Set on Shetland. Magnus Tait, an elderly man living on his own, mentally slow, and once dominated by his mother, was thought by the islanders to have been responsible when a little girl disappeared a few years ago. Her body was never found. But now when Magnus's teenage neighbour Catherine Ross is found strangled, there are those who say that Tait must be the prime suspect, and that the police need look no further. The detective is Jimmy Perez, an islander himself, now living on Fair Isle, but he went to school on Shetland. A carefully constructed satisfying read. 4.6

THE RECKONING, Sue Walker, my rating 4.4
They buried three girls. They buried the killer. But did they bury the truth? In June 1973 the bodies of three missing teenagers were found on the tiny Scottish island of Fidra. And when his father was arrested for the murders, 11-year-old Miller McAllister's life fell apart.

Isolated by snow

RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN, Marshall Browne, my rating 4.3
Just when things really can't get any worse, Aoki is sent by his superintendent to the Kamakura Inn, a ryokan in Hokkaido, to recuperate.The detective in Aoki is revived as he realises that the other guests at the ryokan have secrets to hide, and he wonders if he has been sent there intentionally. He remembers an unsolved mystery of the disappearance of a woman 7 years earlier, and realises that at least two of the other guests have connections to that case. When the ryokan is cut off from the world in a snow storm, this tale becomes a classic locked room mystery. The ryokan is a house of many secrets, built to hide as well as accommodate, and the tension grows as first of all the telephone, and then the lights fail.

THE SACRED CUT, David Hewson, my rating 4.8
For the first time in two decades, Rome is paralysed by a blizzard. And a gruesome discovery is made in the Pantheon, one of the city's most ancient and revered architectural treasures. Covered by soft snow is the body of an American tourist - her back horribly mutilated.

DISTURBED EARTH, Reggie Nadelsen, my rating 4.2
Winter 2003. War is looming and New York is paralysed by the worst blizzard in years. Artie Cohen is called in to investigate a case: a pile of blood-soaked children's clothes have been found on the beach in Brooklyn. Almost against his will, Artie finds himself drawn into a case that involves the death of a child and the unaccountable disappearance of another, all against the background of a city already stricken by fear.

On a train

THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE TRAIN, Agatha Christie, my rating 4.5
When Ruth Van Aldin Kettering is found murdered on the Blue Train en route to her annual winter trip to the French Riviera, it is up to Hercule Poirot to discover if she was murdered because the famous jewel was in her possession or was she murdered by her husband or his mistress or was there yet another sinister motive.

THE EXCURSION TRAIN, Edward Marston, my rating 4.0
London 1852. A trainful of excited fans are delivered to the illegal prize fight between Mad Isaac and the Bargeman near Twyford. But one second class passenger does not leave the train. He has been garrotted en route. Inspector Robert Colbeck of the Detective Department of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, now known as the Railway Detective, after his success in the previous year, takes up the case.

THE VICTIM IN VICTORIA STATION, Jeanne M. Dams, my rating 3.9
American Dorothy Martin broke her ankle shortly after her second marriage. Her British husband is ex-policeman Alan Nesbitt much in demand by police forces around the world as a consultant, and in this book he is only a voice at the other end of the phone. Dorothy has to travel to London by train to see her specialist, and during the journey she talks to the young man in the opposite seat, who is the CEO of a software company. When they arrive at Victoria Station he appears to have fallen asleep, and when Dorothy tries to wake him she finds that he is very dead.

NEVER GO BACK, Robert Goddard, my rating 4.5
An old mate from Harry Barnett's RAF days is organising a 50th anniversary reunion in Scotland at Kilveen Castle where as young men they had taken part in a psychological experiment. But even before they arrive at the castle one of their group has disappeared and soon after they arrive another dies in strange circumstances.