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(notes while reading:) One of the reasons P.D. James is so great is utterly simple. She writes a murder mystery like it's a novel. This sounds facile, but it's unusual, often a hallmark of greatness like James's or Josephine Tey's. In this book, for example, the discovery of the body is written, not in order to give us all the details, clues and red herrings, of the body's condition, but as a truly traumatic event in the life of an established character, a rather sheltered young woman. This is what people mean when they tell you not to write to a formula. If you consider your story as a story, not as its genre, you transcend all the assembly-line books in the world.
Review: 3.5 stars
Ah, P.D. You are too good; it makes me raise my standards. This was just an okay Dalgliesh novel, which means I was never too scared on behalf of a character to stop listening, never caught myself musing on how totally awesome Dalgliesh is and missing parts of the story, et cetera. I was merely entertained and engaged the whole time. I enjoyed the wrinkles added to the plot by the fact that the murder happened at a forensic lab and most of the suspects were forensic scientists; but P.D. James has such a history of grabbing my heart as well as my brain with her mysteries that I am marking this one down for only getting the grey cells.
Review: 3.5 stars
Ah, P.D. You are too good; it makes me raise my standards. This was just an okay Dalgliesh novel, which means I was never too scared on behalf of a character to stop listening, never caught myself musing on how totally awesome Dalgliesh is and missing parts of the story, et cetera. I was merely entertained and engaged the whole time. I enjoyed the wrinkles added to the plot by the fact that the murder happened at a forensic lab and most of the suspects were forensic scientists; but P.D. James has such a history of grabbing my heart as well as my brain with her mysteries that I am marking this one down for only getting the grey cells.
