TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION

THE BLACK TOWER

Disenchanted with his job in the force, Commander Adam Dalgliesh accepts an invitation to visit a friend, a chaplain at a private nursing home, only to discover that his host has died suddenly.

A CERTAIN JUSTICE

When Venetia Aldridge Q C defends a young man accused of the brutal murder of his aunt, the case sets in motion a chain of events as terrifying as they are unpredictable.

THE CHILDREN OF MEN

In 2021 infertility has spread like a plague, and no babies have been born for a quarter of a century anywhere in the inhabited world. The middle aged try to sustain normality under the rule of the Warden of England. Theo Faron, Oxford historian, meets a group challenging the regime, and he is drawn into unimaginable horrors. Some explicit sexual content.

COVER HER FACE

Headstrong and beautiful, the young housemaid Sally Jupp is put rudely in her place, and strangled in her bed behind a bolted door. Investigating the violent death at Martingale manor house, Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh becomes embroiled in the complicated passions beneath the calm surface of English country life.

DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY

Queen of Crime, P.D. James, continues the story of Darcy and Elizabeth of Pride and Prejudice, in this historical detective novel. On the eve of the annual autumn ball the Darcys, and their visitors, are shocked by the arrival of an uninvited guest who announces that her husband has been murdered.

DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS

When a wealthy student is found dead at an isolated theological college, his father demands an investigation by Scotland Yard. Commander Dalgliesh volunteers and finds himself embroiled in the most puzzling and horrific case of his career.

DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS

The scientists who work at Hoggatt's laboratory are experts in violent death. Now the brutal murder of one of their own brings Adam Dalgliesh hurrying from Scotland Yard to the bleak fens of East Anglia, where a murderer is waiting to strike again.

DEVICES AND DESIRES

Commander Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is taking respite from publicity in a converted windmill on the Norfolk coast where he is tying up his aunt’s estate. But he cannot easily escape murder - a psychopathic strangler known as the Whistler is terrorizing the Norfolk countryside.

THE LIGHTHOUSE

An island off the coast of Cornwall, which has become a retreat for high-powered executives, is the setting for a grotesque murder. Dalgliesh is requested to solve the crime with the utmost discretion.

THE MAUL AND THE PEAR TREE

In 1811 John Williams was buried with a stake in his heart. Was he the notorious East End killer or the eighth victim in the bizarre and shocking Ratcliffe Highway Murders? P D James and police historian T A Critchley draw on public records, newspaper clippings and hitherto unpublished sources to shed light on this infamous Wapping mystery.

A MIND TO MURDER

Dalgliesh feels uncharacteristically unsure of himself in the face of a cool killer whose victim is discovered with a chisel through her heart on the floor of the Steen Psychiatric Clinic.

THE MISTLETOE MURDER AND OTHER STORIES

Four perfectly formed stories, ideal reading for the darkest days of the year. While P D James delights in the secrets that lurk beneath the surface at family gatherings, her Christmas stories also provide tantalizing puzzles to keep the reader guessing.

THE MURDER ROOM

Dalgliesh and his team are called in to invetigate the death of the trustee of a private museum. The museum is dedicated to life between 1919 and 1939, and in one room are exhibits from notorious murder cases. The modern killer is uncannily echoing the cases on display in The Murder Room.

THE PRIVATE PATIENT

When Rhoda Gradwyn booked into a private clinic in Dorset, she had every prospect of a successful operation, but she was never to leave Cheverell Manor alive. Dalgliesh and his team, called in to investigate her death, and later a second murder, are confronted with problems even more complicated than the question of innocence or guilt.

SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE

The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed. When another student dies equally mysteriously, it is up to Adam Dalgliesh to unmask a killer who has decided to prescribe murder as the cure for all ills.

SLEEP NO MORE: SIX MURDEROUS TALES

The dark motive of revenge is revealed at the heart of each of these tales. Bullying schoolmasters receive their comeuppance, unhappy marriages and childhoods are avenged and, from the safety of his nursing home, an octogenarian exerts exquisite retribution.

A TASTE FOR DEATH

The bodies were discovered at 8.45 on the morning of Wednesday 18 September by Miss Emily Wharton, a 65 year old spinster of the parish and Darren Wilkes, a 10 year old waif of no particular parish, her unlikely companion. Adam Dalgliesh finds himself confronted with the most confused and convoluted case of his career.

TIME TO BE IN EARNEST

Through the pages of a diary kept from August 1997 for a year, PD James describes her daily life, her literary life and also revisits episodes from her past.

UNNATURAL CAUSES

Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh had been looking forward to a quiet holiday at his aunt's cottage on the remote Suffolk coast. However, all hope of peace is soon shattered by murder. The mutilated body of a local crime writer, Maurice Seaton, floats ashore to drag Adam Dalgliesh into a macabre investigation.

AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN

Cordelia Gray is twenty-two and sole inheritor of the Pryde Detective Agency. Her first assignment finds her hired by Sir Ronald Callender to investigate the death of his son Mark, a young Cambridge student found hanged in mysterious circumstances. Cordelia is required to delve into the hidden secrets of the Callender family and soon realizes it is not a case of suicide, and that the truth is entirely more sinister.