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Murder on the Thames

The great British novelist PD James would have turned 100 in August. PDJ famously began her career in her forties; she wrote several enthralling novels about a tough, practical inspector, Adam Dalgliesh, and she dipped her toes in sci fi and in literary criticism, as well.

The standard thing to say about PDJ is that she wasn't "just" a genre writer; she "transcended" mystery conventions. Kingsley Amis said her work was like "a novel by Iris Murdoch." Anita Brookner tipped a hat to PDJ more than once. 

I was raised on Agatha Christie plays, so discovering PDJ in my late teens was an important moment. PDJ is like Christie but better--realer, more intelligent. Val McDermid, in discussing PDJ's prose, singles out these sentences:

The Manor loomed up out of the darkness, a stark shape against a gray sky pierced with a few high stars. And then the moon moved from behind a cloud and the house was revealed: beauty, symmetry, and mystery bathed in white light.....

You can tell someone is having fun here. The Manor is like a monster, "looming up out of the darkness." Even the stars do a bit of violence: They "pierce the gray sky."

"The Guardian" recently asked readers to choose a favorite PDJ novel: "A Taste for Death" seemed to be the winner, but some votes went to "Original Sin" and "Devices and Desires," as well. (It's a tribute to PDJ that *so many* PDJ novels generated "reader love": "Innocent Blood" was a vote-winner. "The Black Tower," "Death in Holy Orders," "Shroud for a Nightingale," "The Lighthouse," "Cover Her Face" .....)

It's fun to read the "Guardian" piece and the many appended reader comments. I personally am expressing my gratitude to PDJ with a re-read of "Original Sin," which features death in a fictional faux-Venetian palace, somewhere on the banks of the Thames River. It's a nice choice for a series of cold fall days.....

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/aug/04/reading-group-which-pd-james-novel-should-we-read-this-month
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