This is either the third or fourth time I've read this. This time, I was struck by how odd some of the relationships and motivations are. Some of them just didn't ring true for me. I did like the way that Dalgliesh was almost a minor character. I like him, but this was a nice way to bring some of the other characters to the fore.

Original Sin by P.D. James is book 9 in the Adam Dalgliesh series. This mystery involves an old-established publishing firm housed in a building more suitable for a museum called non-ironically Innocent House. The firm seems to be facing more than its fair share of death and mischievous pranks. Are the deaths and the pranks connected? Are the suicides really suicides? Are the deaths even connected to one another? There is a complicated cast of characters each with their own desperate tales, loss of a family during the war, unrequited love, desire to prove himself to a war hero father, fear of impending old age and decline into nothingness, and fear of loss of job, status, ability to meet one’s obligations. Gerard Etienne is not the most likeable character, but it is his death that draws Dalgleish and his team into the affairs of Innocent House. The publishing firm and the house itself given a well-defined sense of place rife with nostalgia, family and secrets.

A great mystery, with twists and turns, connections to the past to understand the present, and a tragic ending. I can’t wait to read the next in the series!

Having read James' The Murder Room before this one, the two novels sadly ran together in my mind, both plot wise, setting-wise and character-wise.

And I really don't think that there are any characters in James' world who aren't depressive, agnostic/atheistic and sexually active. Anyone?? Hello???


Not my favorite P.D. James, but still fairly entertaining.

This was another well written Dalgliesh story. I wanted to finish it in one sitting, but alas work happened.

Yes, I did see the film about this one, but it didn’t play through my head while I was reading the book. Maybe the film wasn’t very memorable.

One of the big plot devices James used in this story, and which I throughly enjoy, is how the character’s religions often tie into the story. The characters often have to make moral choices based upon the religious upbringing. So it is often between the choice of what is right and good or what the justice code demands.

This series just keeps getting better and better.

For me, one of her best, although I can see why readers might consider the multitudinous red herrings to be annoying more than entertaining. I found them entertaining. The motivation for murder in this one is very interesting, grounded both in personal and international history. One of Dalgliesh's team faces a particularly difficult legal/moral challenge when the motivation of the killer is revealed; that detective's choice is a major challenge of the novel's resolution.

Excellent book. Basically, any PD James book is excellent. Adam Dalgliesh is one of the better post-Poirot crime novel characters. Having been a judge (magistrate?) for so long, James knows her British criminality backwards and forwards. Original Sin, like her other Dalgliesh books, breathes comfortably, woven with everyday life in addition to the particulars of murder and investigation.

Highly recommend, if you like serious, thought-provoking crime stories.

Last Christmas I bought a kindle. And since then, my addiction to books seems to have grown exponentially. It took me only a few weeks to download enough books onto it to keep me occupied until at least late summer. Then I joined Netgalley, which means I get tempting emails most days about new books that haven't even been published yet. There aren't many that I can resist. And on top of that, there's the fact that - unfortunately but necessarily - I work for a construction company and it's the end of the financial year, which means that my schedule at the moment is the size of the Grand Canyon.

So I don't quite know what it was that tempted me to ignore all of the above and instead re-read a copy of Original Sin by PD James, which I first read as a teenager and loved. A hankering for simpler times, maybe. But it doesn't matter, because the important thing is that I loved the book all over again.

It's this book and the two that preceded it - A Taste for Death and Devices and Desires - that for me were the peak of PD James' writing career. The main character, Commander Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard, had become familiar and in a way, comforting. His attitude towards his colleagues and indeed some of the suspects he interviews has mellowed since the earliest books in the series, but his intelligence remains as acute as ever. The setting of the book - a publishing house on the bank of the River Thames - is intriguing, the plotting is intelligent and intricate, the descriptions are detailed and vivid and the characterisation is just superb.

The really sad thing is that I'm not sure the book would be published today, at least not in its current format. Someone would say that it was at least 100 pages too long and that a whole load of the detailed descriptions, and the back stories of so many characters needed to disappear. Which would be tragic, because for me it's what makes these books. It gives each character a life. It makes them become real. It means I feel some understanding, some empathy for every single one of them.

The brilliant new managing director of the publishing company wants to revolutionise it, to relocate the premises, to lay off some long-serving but not terribly productive authors and staff and to make the business more profitable. His colleague is the daughter of one of the founders, and a traditionalist. For her, selling the current business premises is like getting rid of her family home. Two very different characters with completely opposing views. And if, after reading about both of their backgrounds and listening to their arguments, you were to ask me which one I supported, my answer would be that I was sat so firmly on the fence that I was in danger of getting a splintered backside.

It also brought a wry smile to my face that this book was published in 1994 and already felt like a museum piece. The internet didn't exist. Even police officers didn't have mobile phones and as for some of the office equipment. Typewriters? Cassette recorders? There'll be adults alive today who don't even know what those were.

It's perhaps my own adult cynicism that makes me feel that the plot, which I remember absolutely loving at the age of 16, seeming a bit far-fetched now. It's for that reason alone that I have to remove the rose-tinted glasses and delete that fifth star. But it's a hand-on-heart, honest four stars plus, and I'm absolutely glad that I read it again. I might just have to read another one very soon.

3.5 stars; a little too wordy in some places, but still enjoyable. Good reveal.

Murders in Publishing
Review of the Vintage Canada paperback (2011) [with Notes via the Kindle eBook] of the Faber & Faber hardcover original (1994)

nNot for nothing were there those five shelves of crime paperbacks in her bedroom, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey and the few modern writers whom Joan considered fit to join those Golden Age practitioners in fictional murder. - a character in "Original Sin" admires her collection of classic crime novels.

The 9th Adam Dalgliesh novel finds his elite team from Scotland Yard CID investigating the apparent murder of the managing director of one of the most prestigious publishing firms in the UK. This is at the (fictional) Peverell Press which is housed in a mock Venetian palazzo called Innocent House, built on the Thames in the area of Wapping in East London. The publisher was ruthlessly dragging the stodgy firm into the late 20th century by planning to sell off the building and move the business to the Docklands, cut non-selling, past their prime authors and trim staff, especially long-time employees. There is no shortage of suspects.

nDalgliesh said: "Mr. Gerard Etienne took over as chairman and managing director fairly recently, didn't he? Was he well-liked?"
"Well he wouldn't have been carried out of here in a body bag if he was a little ray of sunshine about the place. Someone didn't like him, that's for sure." - Dalgliesh interviews Mrs. Demery, the kitchen staff at Peverell Press.

To complicate matters further, the publishing house had recently seen another on-site death only weeks before with the suicide of one of its editors who had been given notice. A prankster is also working behind the scenes to sabotage the business by hiding manuscripts and cancelling author engagements. Dalgliesh and his regular assistant Kate Miskin and new assistant Daniel Aaron are faced with a mysterious cause of death in an apparently sealed archive room with every suspect having alibis. And then yet another murder occurs.


Proposed design of an unbuilt Venetian inspired set of buildings on the Thames from the 1980s which were never built. Possibly the inspiration for the Venetian palazzo of Peverell Press on the Thames in "Original Sin". Image sourced from Unbuilt London.

I very much enjoyed Original Sin (the significance of the title doesn't become clear until towards the very end of the book), with P.D. James' extensive character building and descriptive settings of both the publishing house and its environs. Some of the characters are archetypes i.e. the ruthless business head, the subservient sibling, the washed up author, the rejected love interest etc. but this is James at the top of her game and I'd even say this is one of my favourites of hers. Probably that is partially because it is set in a world of books. Kirkus Reviews described it as "the Middlemarch of the classic detective story," and that seems as good a one-line summary as any.


Front cover of the original Faber & Faber hardcover edition (1994). Image sourced from Wikipedia.

I read Original Sin 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.

Rescued from storage are my early P.D. James paperbacks, mostly published by Sphere Books in the 1980s.

Trivia and Links
Original Sin was adapted for television in 1997 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 3 episodes of the 1997 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 Original Sin. Season 1 adapted books 4, 5 & 7. There has not been an announcement of the Season 2 and Season 3 adaptations (as of late-November 2022).

Having read and enjoyed other books by this author, especially children of men, I was disappointed by this one. Although I'd found a similar problem with A Certain Justice, the issue of too many characters really became a problem in Original Sin. When the eventual murderer was revealed I couldn't remember who they were or how they fitted in with the plot. All the excitement or dare I say even relevance came in the last 2 chapters which is disappointing to say the least. It's readable but I don't think it's James' best.

I knew this book was a 4 by page 70. The writing is so beautiful that not even the jumbled plot devices at the end of the novel could change my rating.

It's a murder mystery, but I found it fairly uninteresting and disappointing. As others on Goodreads complain, James includes a good deal of detail about most characters, even minor characters -- and this trait of her writing often serves to distract from the story. And it makes the book much longer than it needs to be.

There are a few clues that might help the reader figure out "whodunit," but most of the strongest evidence is revealed very near the end when discovered by a police investigator. That police officer then acts in a manner that seems quite implausible to me, deciding to lie to a colleague and trail the main suspect rather than acting more decisively to close the case.

I've read some of the other books in the Dalgliesh series, but I likely won't read another for awhile.