I'm uncertain why I kept reading this book. P.D. James is a wonderful writer, usually. There was a bit in the middle where I thought things were improving. I was wrong.

Phillipa is not likeable; neither are her parents nor her adoptive parents. The parents of the murdered child aren't exactly likeable either. I'm struggling to find any character enjoyable - possibly the grocer?

The descriptive portions of the story were too much. Not the murder particularly, but flower arrangements, odors, trains, buses, rooms... Usually, I like talented writer's descriptions and I like James' works, so I expected to enjoy that. No, I can't come up with any reason I kept on reading. Sheer madness.

Perhaps I read this book to warn others not to?

I really didn’t enjoy literally anything about this book. I thought that it was quite a pointless read because it was advertised as a murder story but within the first few chapters it was revealed that Phillipa’s birth mother was the target and Mr. Scase was the killer and the entire story just followed Scase stalking the two women. I was absolutely bored to death with their “cat and mouse chase” which moved at the rate of a snail with about as much excitement as a salt shaker.

I also really hated how the murder of Julie Scase was glossed over during the entire book and how it was made to seem like such an unimportant event. Phillipa’s birth father raped the 12 year old girl and then she was strangled to death by Phillipa’s birth mother. HOW IS THAT NOT EMPHASIZED MORE?! The entire book is just Phillipa excusing their heinous crime and pretending like it wasn’t a big deal and she even tries to justify her father’s and mother’s actions. That really disgusted me and made me angry, and not in a productive way.

I also abhored the end, particularly how the birth mother committed suicide before justice could be served, and how the foster father confessed to wanting to sleep with Phillipa and then she revealed at the end how they did have sex together in order to move past their sexual tension and be father & daughter again. It seriously made me so furious and uncomfortable that James was talking about incest like it was normal and how the ending didn’t provide the reader with a succinct and satisfying conclusion.

Well Crafted, But I Did NOT Enjoy it

I almost gave this a 3, since clearly the story is well crafted and James knows her way around crime fiction.

But---I didn't enjoy reading this; in fact I couldn't WAIT for it to end.

She has a very cynical worldview. All of the major characters are despicable.

It didn't help that Penelope Dellaporta read the audio in a sing-song voice like a bored, upper class, English school girl.

Philippa Palfrey, the adopted daughter of Maurice and Hilda Palfrey, uses the Children Act, a British law (and the name of an Ian McEwan novel) to find her birth mother. Philippa is intelligent, scheming, unfeeling, and mean. But she's very pretty and part of a well known upper crust family (by adoption), so people seem to overlook her unpleasant personality.

Her birth parents, it turns out, had a history.  Her birth mother, Mary Dacton, strangled a child, Julie Scase, after Philippa's birth father, a pederast, had raped the girl.

Philippa, who doesn't care for her adoptive parents, even though they spoiled her rotten, is ecstatic to find her real mother. She rents a flat for the both of them for a few months during the summer before she is to matriculate at Cambridge.

More plot twists ensue.

Maurice is a leftist sociology professor and a frequent guest on TV talk shows.  Turns out he is also an adulterer and has been in love with Philippa since he first encountered her at age eight. Towards the end of the book, they sleep together, even though Maurice is still married to Hilda, Philippa's adoptive mother. Oh well! Things like marriage don't seem to count for much in James' zeitgeist.

Hilda is a weak, self-doubting woman who cares for nothing but cooking. It's not clear whether she even cooks well. Towards the end of the book, she finally gets a dog. Hurray! At last a living creature loves Hilda!

Philippa's sometime boyfriend, Gabriel, is a snooty, self-serving aristo  who happily betrays her for his own purposes.

And to top it all off, there's Norman Scase, the dead girl's father, a creepy, weasly, retired bureaucrat who plots to murder Mary Dacton

Everyone lies to everyone about everything (or at the very least, omits critical information). Everyone (except for Hilda, who is naive, dumb, and needy) is scheming and self-serving.

I'm glad this one's over...

A wonderful book, more a study of human mind than a crime novel. I was engrossed in the happenings , and the wonderful description of nature as well as characters . A very unusual story .

I read this book because I had read another P.D. James book and enjoyed it. This one not so much. It dragged on and on at times. I actually only kept reading because I wanted to find out how it ended. It got unnecessarily crude or crass near the end and the actual ending was a big disappointment. I am now wondering if I will read any other books by P.D. James.

Excellent psychological novel. Philippa is the adopted daughter of Maurice and Hilda. When she turns 18 discovers who her mother was a murderess of a young girl and is about to come out of prison. Philippa decides to help her mother for a few months after her release. She hires a flat above a fruit stop in London. In the background Scase the father of the dead girl plans his revenge and murder.

What I liked about the story was the slow build up and the tension of Scase planning the murder. There was also Philippa’s attempt to connect with her mother which was happening. Then in a great twist she discovers the truth about her mother and why she was adopted.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Philippa discovers her mother had physically abused her and she was adopted before the murder. She argues with her mother and then goes out angry in to a wet rainy London night. After she calms down and returns she finds in the flat Scase with her dead mother. However, while Scase has stabbed he did not kill her as she had taken an overdose to commit suicide. Excellent twist.

Extraordinary book. It's why I wish everyone wouldn't give every book they read 5 stars, because then there's no room for the truly excellent 5-star books. I found this book in a little Free Library, which adds to the fun of finding it.

P.D. James writes mysteries with a wonderful detective called Adam Dalgleish. But Innocent Blood isn't a typical mystery; it's more of a suspense thriller and a psychological study of several people whose lives intersect in Philippa Palfrey.

Philippa has been adopted by Maurice and Hilda Palfrey, but she wants to find out who her real parents are, so she applies to find out after her 18th birthday. Turns out her parents aren't at all who she imagined them to be. And neither are her adoptive parents.

James writes with understated prose, leaking out the secrets one at a time over the course of the book, until the climax. The denouement, when it came, was a shocker, but like in all great novels, it was perfectly in keeping with what is known of the characters.

James also does a wonderful job of describing places, especially London. I felt as if I were back in the late 1970s with Philippa as she wandered around the city. The sights, sounds, smells of a great city are part of the charm of this novel.

I have read all of P.D.James, so I must have read Innocent Blood at one time, but I'm glad I was able to read it again. I would encourage you to read P.D. James, particularly Children of Men, another non-mystery but another 5 star book.

Philippa Palfry comes of age and seeks to find her biological mother having been adopted. Having lead a privileged lifestyle she is going up to Cambridge and wants to be a writer. The trail leads her to murder and mystery where she finds that her may not be all the she hopes. Overlapping this is Norman Scase who is on the trail of revenge. Lots of emotion and soul searching and the twists expected of a P.D.James novel Perhaps just a little predictable and therefore a 3 and not 4 stars.

P.D James - a name that you can’t avoid knowing something about, but since I am not a habitual consumer of mystery and detective novels, I never thought she will be an author for me.
And yet somewhere in the remote darkness of my book-bying past, this book found it’s way into my possession. And serendipitously enough within a collection of interviews with an eclectic group of authors to which I recently listened, P.D James was one of those who attracted most of my attention.
So, to begin with, the title - O ye, devious powers of marketing, that prompt authors (or editors?) to add (unnecessary?) drama to the title to attract a wide range of readers! Those who fall for it, and pick up this book expecting gruesome (or any) bloody scenes would be, I am sorry to say, sorely disappointed.
On the other hand, aside from the drama, the title is not completely wrong. There has been a crime, and the victim has certainly been innocent, but apart from being the story’s raison d’être, it is only a part of the narrative landscape which is not so much about the crime, but about it’s psychological consequences, which makes it all the more interesting.
I don’t know if this book is in any way representative of P.D James writing. Perhaps it is not, maybe it’s just a temporary diversion from the usual style, an experiment on the author’s part, just as “The Children of Men” was, which I was surprised to find also was authored by P.D James. Or maybe it is what all her writing is like, and it is only for the marketing reasons that it is usually clothed in a slightly misleading package of crime.
An unexpectedly good book anyway and I am slightly tempted to go on and discover more.

Hmmm. How do you rate a book that is highly disturbing and sinister, yet deals honestly with the harsh reality of human depravity? Can you really click, "liked it"?

James once again forces you to think about evil and its horrific consequences. This was, in that respect, a very painful book to read. She peels back sin in a way you can't avoid seeing all of its ugliness and gruesomeness.

I missed James' detective, Dalgliesh. who brings sanity into the chaos. At least in those detective novels there is someone you can trust. Not in this book. Virtually every character is marred. The characters are a product of extreme brokenness. They do not know how to truly love anyone. They seize every selfish opportunity as they try to navigate through life, all the while being severely crippled emotionally. Some of this needed revelation begins to surface in Phillipa's heart late in the game, but it seems it is too late. There was a quote near the end that said, "You only find your true identity in loving another". And you know by reading this book what "truly loving another" is and is not. It is not in grasping or in self-pleasure.

I nearly was knocked over when James' brought into the story the only true picture of love. From the mouth of Maurice, staunch atheist, is poured out the story of a heavenly Father sending his own Son to die for a world lost in the muck and mire of sin. Maurice is incredulous and unbelieving, but that only magnifies the effect. James wove this in quite expertly. There it was, in all of its incongruity, that only picture of true love.

Innocent Blood was heavy and sordid. It had to be. I had to fast forward some (as I listened to the audiobook) since descriptions were too hard to bear. Sin is like that. It is hard to see, hard to standby, and hard to witness.

I am in a conundrum. I can't recommend this book because it has so much yuck factor but at the same time it treats fallenness so truthfully. In a world where atheism is a fast growing religion among our young, this book shows where that leads. The book also shows what happens to a life bent on revenge. And it clearly shows that there is no possible redemption for damaged lives just by trying to do better. The only deep change is through faith and belief in God. This quick and short message comes into the story from the most unlikely voice and it is so mixed with contradictions that you are left to wonder at it.

But my question is where do we treat these issues that show how foul and repugnant sin is? Where do we let careful imagination fast forward to what life leads to without God, without grace, without forgiveness? Well, I guess you would get this book.

When I looked at each character and saw what motivated them it was heartbreaking. All came from homes severely damaged and from all social classes. The crime didn't just happen. The underlying hate, fear, and lust had been embedded in each character a long time, working its way into every corner of each character. My thought was what will happen to change this from becoming a reality for us? Families are becoming even more broken as we drift away from absolutes. If this book is any indication of the outcomes we will see in our lifetime, oh how we need to break the cycle! The message of the cross is the only answer. From the mocking lips of the unbeliever comes the only remedy. Innocent blood was shed for all of us.

James is a good writer - she must be considered at the top of the heap of the world's mystery writers. Most others don't come close. But her worldview is so misanthropic, most of her characters so hateful, pathetic, or disgusting (the lovely Dalgliesh is an exception, and it's why you breathe a sigh of relief whenever he appears) that all her novels are tinged and blighted by it. Soaked in it. This is a psychological thriller, not a police procedural; Dalgliesh is not a character. In this book the only humans you can stand are a blind hotel clerk, Violet, and a 12-year old rape and murder victim, Julie. Everyone else is absolutely awful.

Also, nothing in the characters' motivations is believable. The protagonist, Philippa, an 18-year-old aspiring writer who will be heading off to Cambridge in a few months, was adopted at age 8 by a well-to-do couple, a haughty college professor and his quavering, self-loathing wife. Philippa has never bonded with her adoptive parents, so when she reaches the age of majority, she decides she must know who her real parents were. This is revealed early in the book so I won't be completely spoiling it: her father was a pedophile rapist who died in prison, her mother the murderess of the last girl her father raped, Julie. Her mother is due to be released from prison shortly, and Philippa - like any other normal daughter - decides she must take a flat with her murderess mother and live with her until it's time to go to university. Daughter and murderess enjoy each other's company and live happily, working grungy jobs at a fish 'n chips fast food restaurant to support themselves, until plot twists happen. At the same time, Julie's father Norman, keeping a promise to his dead wife, plots the murder of Philippa's mother (Julie's killer).

You will not understand why Philippa's mother murdered a 12-year-old girl. You will not be able to align the murdering mother with the later view we get of her, shopping happily for vegetables. James is utterly unconvincing on this.

Oh, and at the end of the book, we find out that Philippa's adoptive father, Maurice, (big spoiler here, you probably shouldn't click) was basically in love with Philippa from the moment he saw her at age eight, and decided he and his wife must adopt her. Every woman he's fucked since then has failed to live up to his imagination of fucking Philippa. He gets his chance - on a trip to Italy, he and Philippa have consensual sex, just once. They have to get it out of their systems! So they can go on to live normal lives. You see, it's totally, totally normal..

James is very skilled in her descriptive passages; she can detail a shabby room like no one else. Every time she writes about shabbiness, which she does a lot, it is horrifying. I actually almost needed to throw up after some of her shabby descriptions here. She also loves - LOVES - the word fawn. You should play a drinking game and have a shot every time she uses the word fawn. The color, not the baby deer.

A young adopted woman applies to find out who her parents were, and gets more than she bargained for.

The ending paid off, but it was a bit of a slog to get there. There are a lot of layers to the truth, is the main story here. The cynicism and political two by fours are tiresome, and in the end it's a polemical book. And yet that ending...