THE BLACK TOWER
UK publication: 1975 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1975 (Charles Scribner's Sons)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments:
COVER HER FACE
UK publication: 1962 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1966 (Charles Scribner's Sons)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments:
DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS
UK publication: 1977 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1977 (Charles Scribner's Sons)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments:
INNOCENT BLOOD
UK publication: 1980 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1980 (Charles Scribner)
Detective: Philippa Palfrey
Plot summary and comments:
A MIND TO MURDER
UK publication: 1963 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1967 (Charles Scribner)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments: James's second novel, set in a fashionable London psychiatric clinic. The clinic administrator, Miss Bolam, is found dead in the basement one evening, stabbed through the heart with a chisel. Dalgliesh is in the neighborhood for a publishing party and takes charge of the case. The suspects are the clinic doctors and staff, including 3 psychiatrists, the medical director, two nurses, and two porters---the patients being ruled out early on. The interrelationships among the staff, whose histories include affairs, promotions and transfers, and an unexplained theft, are uncovered skilfully; the background and current situation of the principals are well described; and the presentation of the scene through the eyes of each of the characters is very convincing. James, herself a hospital administrator, clearly knows the milieu very well. One can tell that she is still finding her own style, however, as the plot is not driven by the characters in the way of her later books; the murderer is brought to justice, with assorted other malfeasances tidied up, and the characters are textured and interesting, but the two strands are not strongly related. There is more information than usual about Dalgliesh's personal history, his poetry, and the circumstances of his first marriage and current loneliness, and at the end he actually sets up a dinner date, though not with any of the clinic characters.
SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE
UK publication: 1971 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1971 (Charles Scribner)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments:
UNNATURAL CAUSES
UK publication: 1967 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1967 (Charles Scribner)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments:
AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN
UK publication: 1972 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1973 (Charles Scribner's Sons)
Detective: Cordelia Gray
Plot summary and comments: The novel begins by introducing Cordelia Gray, 22-year-old junior partner in a barely solvent detective agency, who suddenly succeeds to the sole proprietorship after her boss commits suicide. She is stunned when a customer actually walks in her door some days later; the case turns out to be an investigation of the suspicious death of a Cambridge student, carried out on behalf of his father, the wealthy and reclusive biologist Sir Ronald Callender. Mark Callender apparently hanged himself in his room, and Sir Ronald wants to know why. Finding weird discrepancies in the circumstances (a lipstick stain on his mouth and a smutty picture nearby), Cordelia follows a trail of hidden secrets among his friends and family to arrive at the truth of the murder--not without some danger to herself. A satisfying story, well plotted, and an intelligent and sensitive picture of a young woman, alone in the world, trying to succeed in an "unsuitable job" despite her own lack of confidence and the puzzled disapproval of society.
A TASTE FOR DEATH
UK publication: 1986 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1986 (Alfred A. Knopf)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments:
THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN
UK publication: 1982 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1982 (Charles Scribner)
Detective: Cordelia Gray
Plot Summary and comments:
ORIGINAL SIN
UK publication: 1994 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1994 (Alfred A. Knopf)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments: This psychologically complex detective novel, set in the world of publishing, begins with the discovery of an apparent suicide in the London offices of Peverell Press, a venerable family firm which occupies a grand pseudo-Venetian palace on the banks of the River Thames. The reader follows the viewpoint of an outsider, a temporary typist, for an introduction to the personalities of the firm, and we soon learn that there is turmoil under the patrician surface: commercial pressures have made times hard for small, selective publishers, and the new managing director (Gerard Etienne), who inherited the role from his father, is an unsentimental businessman who would like, against the wills of the other partners, to sell the palace--or even the firm. The assumed suicide of subeditor Sonia Clements is blamed on the fact that she was just given notice as part of Etienne's shakeup, but after a day full of conflict and violent oubursts among the house staff, Etienne himself is found dead, and Dalgliesh soon suspects that both deaths, as well as some odd disappearances around the firm, are connected. The second part of the book begins with the police investigation; Dalgliesh's sergeants Kate Miskin and Daniel Aarons (replacing Massingham) are responsible for much of the legwork, and as usual there is fine characterization of the two of them, their backgrounds, their relationship to Dalgliesh, and their attitudes to policing. As more details of the firm and its personnel emerge, it seems that there may be some connection to events of the distant past: specifically, to occupied France in the Second World War, where one former director was in the underground resistance, and to some secret hidden in the firm's archives, in a dusty attic. In the last quarter of the book, events spiral with another death and a tense showdown. A fine book, which dwells thoughtfully on the ideas of good and evil, especially in reference to the Nazis and the Jews, and the principle of vengeance. The geographical and architectural setting is particularly compelling, too, with the presence of the Thames dimly felt through the entire book.
DEVICES AND DESIRES
UK publication: 1989 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1990 (Alfred A. Knopf)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments:
A CERTAIN JUSTICE
UK publication: 1997 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 1998 (Alfred A. Knopf)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments:
DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS
UK publication: 2001 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 2001 (Alfred A. Knopf)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments: Continuing the pattern of James's later writing, this book is foremost a novel of setting and character, which encompasses several mystery plots but is ultimately not defined by them. The action is set in motion by the puzzling death of a young student at a small and isolated High Anglican theological college (seminary) on England's East Coast. Ronald Treeves is a priest in training who suffocates under a collapsed cliff by the sea, and though his death is officially ruled an accident, his wealthy and influential father manages to get Adam Dalgliesh sent informally to St. Anselm's to investigate further. Dalgliesh, in fact, has a connection of his own with St. Anselm's: he spent a summer there as a teenager when his father, a priest, was on a parish exchange, and one strand of the plot follows Dalgliesh as he encounters his own past and sifts through the memories and feelings that arise. The first third of the book builds a detailed picture of life at St. Anselm's, with portraits of the various priests, students, and staff members in residence, and we begin to see that there are deep waters and hidden secrets beneath the institution's surface. Suspense builds as the college prepares for an inspection visit by Archdeacon Crampton, a member of the church hierarchy who is known to be opposed to the college's existence, and who proves to be an entirely disagreeable person, and the plot eventually explodes with more violence and deaths, which may or may not be related to that of Ronald Treeves, the student who began it all. The end of the story, characteristically rather dark, is as concerned with letting the characters work themselves out as it is with uncovering the various mysteries--although, for once, at least one murderer is brought to legal justice in the end. The book demonstrates James's longtime concern with examining the motivations of and connections between her characters, as well as a thoughtful consideration of the role of religion--especially of the 'high church' Anglican-Catholic variety--in a modern and secularized society. As satisfying and literate as any of James's books, this has special relevance for anyone interested in Anglo-Catholicism, but will please any reader who values the combination of psychological novel and mystery plot.
THE MURDER ROOM
UK publication: 2003 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 2003 (Alfred A. Knopf)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments: I reprint the jacket flap copy here: "When Commander Dalgliesh is persuaded by an old friend to visit the Dupayne, a small private museum on the edge of Hampstead Heath, he can have no idea that he will return to it one week later under very different circumstances. One of the family trustees has been horribly murdered and Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate a death which, from the first, is fraught with complications. Even before the murder, the museum was in tumult. A new lease is due to be signed and two of the trustees are determined to keep the museum open, the third passionately determined on its closure. The museum is dedicated to the years 1919-1939 and one of the galleries, the Murder Room, displays exhibits from the most notorious cases of those inter-war years. And now a modern killer is at work, the crimes uncannily echoing the cases on display. All the small group of people, the trustees, staff and volunteers, who work in the Dupayne, have the means and the opportunity for murder. One of them has the ruthlessness to kill and kill again. The investigation is complicated for Dalgliesh by his love for Emma Lavenham, but their relationship, at a sensitive stage for them both, is continually frustrated by the demands of his job. As step by step he moves closer to the murderer, is the investigation taking him further away from commitment to the woman he loves? "
THE LIGHTHOUSE
UK publication: 2005 (Faber and Faber)
US publication: 2005 (Alfred A. Knopf)
Detective: Adam Dalgliesh
Plot summary and comments: Until I can add my own remarks, I quote the Publishers Weekly review of this 13th Dalgliesh mystery: "[Like its two predecessors, The Lighthouse] focuses at first on a hostile character who threatens to shatter a longstanding way of life. Acclaimed novelist Nathan Oliver incurs the wrath of his fellow residents on Combe Island, a private property off the Cornish coast used as an exclusive retreat by movers and shakers in many fields. When Oliver is murdered, Scotland Yard dispatches Dalgliesh and two of his team to Combe, where the commander checks alibis and motives in his trademark understated manner. Because the detective's new romantic attachment is more of a backstory than in The Murder Room, it intrudes less on the murder inquiry. The solution, which hinges on the existence of an unknown child, is less than fully satisfactory and also borrows elements from some of James's recent plots. Devotees more interested in her hero's personal growth than his deductive technique will find much to enjoy.