Read this at the same time as James's latest Dalgliesh novel (The Private Patient). Enjoyed it, but enjoyed how much her craft has improved even more. I hope she's contagious.

One of those contrived English murder at the country house stories that Agatha Christie did sooooo much better. I'm not a fan of P.D. James. She starts with a great premise but in words and dry unemotional narrative, delivers little. Same as in The Children of Men...nice premise, cold and wordy execution! Boring! This is the last time I'll try reading her...just not my cup of tea!

לסקירה מפורטת בעברית, קישור לבלוג שלי -

https://sivi-the-avid-reader.com/cove...

Un libro de detectives al puro estilo británico pero con un twist.

En un pueblo británico tenemos a la casa de los Maxie, llamada Martingale, el dueño Simon Maxi está enfermo y postrado en su cama al cuidado de su esposa, tienen dos hijos, Stephen y Deborah, ya jóvenes adultos.

La casa parece ser el centro de todo, como un ente vivo que necesita cuidado y atención para no morir, debido a que la fortuna ha mermado, los Maxie deben hacer economías en sus gastos, por lo que sólo tienen de fijo a Martha, una leal sirvienta que ha estado por años a su servicio, para descargarle un poco de trabajo contratan a Sally Jupp una bella muchacha que es madre y soltera.

A partir de aquí empiezan los problemas y por supuesto un asesinato por resolver, no falta el médico del pueblo, un párroco, una enamorada de Stephen y un enamorado para Deborah.

Algo que me gusto es que los personajes no son del todo simpáticos, todos tienen sus claroscuros, unos más que otros. Deborah es inteligente, segura de si misma pero muy elitista, Stephen es médico, aunque aparenta ser un buen chico, tiene un mundo interior sumamente complejo y egoísta, Martha tiene un profundo amor por la familia, pero desprecia a la gente de menor rango, pero la joya de la corona es Sally, una chica aparentemente vulnerable, que genera compasión debido a su estatus de madre soltera y su manera tan humilde de comportarse, pero que guarda en su interior a una mujer lista, segura de si misma y muy resentida.

Disfrute mucho leyendo el desarrollo de la historia, como las apariencias a veces lo son todo y no permiten ver las cosas con claridad.

El misterio de un cuarto cerrado

The first story to feature Adam Dalgliesh as the DCI investigating a murder in which all the family members are suspects. The revelation at the end is not an "ah-ha" moment, and the writing is pretty much uneven. A perfectly passable story but if you are here for Dalgliesh I would recommend reading the later ones.

My Rating -3/5

I enjoyed this visit back to the first mystery series I ever picked up in my late teens. Sometimes, it's a good thing that my memory is so poor, as this felt like a first-time read.

I love the way James writes. She has a great sense of place, and is able to concisely communicate various people's states of mind amazingly well. She is also able to manage this equally well from a man's or a woman's point of view.

The murderer was a surprise, and there were a couple of twists at the end I didn't see coming. The last chapter hints at a possible developing relationship between one of the characters and the (recurring) detective. I'll definitely be continuing on with this series, and hopefully revisiting the English countryside in the process.

Thoroughly enjoyed this smart and engaging book! I adored the English estate setting and the somewhat alarming misconceptions of the time. I’ve been meaning to check this series out for years. So glad it exceeded my expectations and cannot wait to get started on the next one!

Ok, lets start with a murder, maybe in a locked room, yeah something like that, you know and then maybe the whole thing should have a closed in kinda claustrophobic feel to it, like in a country manor, yeah, I like that. Just for the fun of it, lets have it take place around a celebration or party or something like that so we can have at least five or six people around at the time. Oooh, I know, I know, lets give them all a motive for wanting to have done the victim in. Man, this is getting good. Better yet, maybe they should all have questionable alibi's, maybe we could throw in a few twist and turns to kinda shake things up and keep everybody on edge (call them red herrings maybe?) Ok, ok, and at the end I see this thing where all the suspects are gathered around in the same room while this detective guy kinda rehashes the whole story while each of them stares at the others wondering who the real killer is. OMG! the tension.

Wow ...I can't stand it, lead me to a typewriter, I got to write this down, while it's still fresh, and before somebody else beats me to it!


All right, all right, calm down, I know, its been done before, maybe more than once, but you know, you put P.D. James behind that typewriter and you could still get yourself a pretty good little story.

So chill!

This was a generous rating on my part because I actually found this book laughable. This was the first Adam Dalgleish book, I believe, and it's obvious that P.D. James had read a lot of Agatha Christie before diving into this; in fact, this was Adam Dalgleish playing Hercule Poirot for most of the book except he had relatively few appearances and not a very auspicious start to the series.

This novel is a very basic parlor murder where all of the suspects are present in the mansion from the start and forming their opinions on who killed the victim since no one really liked her and they each had a motive. Since I don’t particularly like Agatha Christie, this book was wasted on me; if you love this sort of thing and read and/or compile Internet lists of “The Best 3000 Agatha Christie / Marge Allingham / Nero Wolfe et al Murder Mysteries”, you’ll get a lot more out of this than I did. I only laughed and waited for the part when someone would leap up and shout, “Yes, I hated the shameless hussy but I didn’t kill her!” or called her a “stepped-up country girl who didn’t know her place”, to paraphrase The Smiths. Of course, no one regretted that she was dead and all sympathy went to the killer, once revealed. It was all very stagey, particularly in that almost all the “scenes” were one-on-one dialogues, or interviews with Dalgleish while his assistant took notes. Then at the end, the great reveal as Dalgleish eliminates one suspect after another until we get to the confession, “Yes, it was me! But you see, I had no choice, I had to kill her or…” Blah, blah, blah.

The best part of these novels is the archaic vocabulary. As I was saying to the scullery maid the other day - and, really, no house should be without one but it’s so hard finding decent help today – these words and expressions tend to invade your own speech. (I did a summer semester in London studying Shakespeare and theatre and had to be cautioned to stop referring to our waitress as the “serving wench.”) However, it’s all good fun and while I tend to avoid these types of books, it’s good to read one now and then, if only to remind you WHY you avoid them. So, good day, I’m off to thrash the staff now!

I am currently reading a number of detective/mystery series, working my way through from the first of each and moving forward. P.D. James' Adam Dalgliesh stories are a welcome addition.

I found "Cover Her Face" to be an engaging book with interesting insights into the many main characters --victim and suspects alike. Inspector Dalgliesh understands the psychology of effective interview techniques and uses them to his advantage to work towards a solution to the crime at hand.

3,5* für den Auftakt der 14 Bände umfassenden Reihe um Kommissar Adam Dalgliesh von Scotland Yard.

„Ein Spiel zuviel“ ist ein solider Cosy-Crime-Roman älteren Datums, der sich flott lesen lässt. Über Dalgliesh erfährt man wenig, aber das wird sich in den anderen Teilen wohl ändern.

I read this book to fill the International Woman of Mystery square of my 2019 Halloween Bingo Card.

This is my first foray into P.D. James’ mystery writing and I was pleasantly impressed. I can certainly see a relationship to the works of Agatha Christie--but I guess it is virtually impossible to write in this genre without paying homage to both her and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. What James does so well is to make me feel like I truly know the people that she is writing about. They aren’t just cardboard cut-outs, they are fully realized people with their own motivations and prejudices. They are part of their community, well known and involved.

What she also captures so well, in my opinion, is the way that society was changing in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Class was becoming less meaningful and less respected. Sexual mores were already shifting and loosening. Charity from upper class people was less valued and more resented.

In Dalgleish himself, I see the roots of another favourite detective, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, written by Louise Penny. They are both quiet, introspective, intellectual men who have good taste and good sense. I didn’t get to know Adam Dalgliesh as well as I would like to in this first book, but I will certainly go on to the next book to see if I can remedy that situation.