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Biography

[List of books][Book review]

P. D. James

Lady Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, born August 3rd 1920.

She is best known for her crime novels with (presently) Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland yard (he is also a poet) as the hero. This is intelligent, slow-moving crime, usually set in some close quarter with a limited number of suspects - quite classic British crime. Most of these novels have been made into television series- they are favourites of mine.

She has also written two crime novels with private eye Cordelia Gray as the heroine, and one stand-alone crime novel (Innocent Blood).

Her Children of Men is a science fiction novel, set in 2021 when no child has been born on earth for 25 years.

She has written an entertaining autobiography in the form of a diary of her 78th year, where events prod her to think of her past and in a kind of collage technique gives us a portrait of her - quite unlike the normal timeline biography, starting at the parents' wedding and ending today.

Books by P. D. James:

Fiction

Adam Dalgliesh crime novels

• Cover Her Face 1962
• A Mind to Murder 1963
• Unnatural Causes 1967
• Shroud for a Nightingale 1971
• The Black Tower 1975
• Death of an Expert Witness 1977
• A Taste for Death 1986
• Devices and Desires 1989
• Original Sin 1994
• A Certain Justice 1997
• Death in Holy Orders 2001
• The Murder Room 2003
• The Lighthouse 2005

Cordelia Gray crime novels

• An Unsuitable Job for a Woman 1972
• The Skull Beneath the Skin 1982

Other fiction

• Innocent Blood 1980 (Crime)
• The Children of Men 1993 (Science fiction)

Non-fiction

• The Maul and the Pear Tree: The... 1986 (with T. A. Chritchley - about an 1811 crime)
• Time to Be in Earnest 1999 (Autobiography)

[01.01.04] P.D. James' last book, The Murder Room, is a classic Dalgliesh novel. A close-knit group of people, this time centered around a private museum, is investigated as one of them dies. He is found dead, at a time when he and his siblings are in profound disagreement over the future of the museum – and the murder has some uncanny resemblance to a murder exhibited in the museum. Painstakingly Dalgliesh and his sidekicks Miskin and Tarrant unravel the mystery. At the same time, Dalgliesh needs to spend some energy on his love life, which he seems at risk of making a total mess of.

A lot of detail in the description of the setting, which is well executed, but overall it becomes too much setting and too little nerve and excitement, even if the solution comes as a surprise to me, at least. And Dalgliesh's love life, interesting though it may be, feels a distraction and not a part of the plot of the novel. Not James' best, a good read still, though.

[30.04.03]A must for the reader of modern crime novels, The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction gives a encyclopedic view of post-war crime fiction. For non-English readers it is a drawback that very little non-English material is included, but it is a great fountain of facts about English language authors. Its scope is strictly crime, leaving thrillers out - it still fills 780 pages, so you'll have more than enough to read.
More Mammoth Encyclopedias or Mammoth Books of a surprisingly wide range of subjects - Erotic photography, Shaggy Dog stories, Murder and Science and so on....

Denne siden ble sist oppdatert 18.09.2006 .