‘On November the 21st, the day of her forty-seventh birthday, and three weeks and two days before she was murdered, RhodaGradwyn went to Harley street to keep a first appointment with her plastci surgeon, and there in a consulting room designed, so it appeared, to inspire confidence and allay apprehension, made the decision which would lead inexorably to her death.’
The opening line of PD James’ latest novel steps carefully through each clause, delineating the fatal connection between action and outcome. There is something of the flourish about this opening, James celebrating her elegant poised style which contextualises the ‘crime’ within a very precise environmnet and chronology.
I haven’t read any PD James for several years. I loved A Taste For Death and found it very satisifying to teach. She writes in a traditional, old school way of personalities and their fates, carefully building her narratives so that they seem solid and real. Characters are developed and move through their allotted paces without the ‘clunkiness of some writers and Dagliesh her detective has few foibles to distract the reader from the purposeful stride of the plot.
Always admirable and tightly drawn. I am having a change from James Lee Burke and John Connolly both of whom I love…but retreating this time to the cool climate of UK rather than the Southern Gothic of the Americans….
