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As far as active service goes, Commander Adam Dalgliesh must by now rival Bryant & May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Like that ancient pair, Dalgliesh is also head of a special unit, in this case, the Special Investigation Squad, tasked with dealing with cases where very important people or highly sensitive information may be involved. This time out, he is called away from his first interview with his prospective father-in-law to Dorset, to a former manor house, now private cosmetic surgery clinic, where a muck-raking journalist lies strangled in her bed following surgery. Rhoda Gradwyn was born to "a frightened and ineffective mother and a drunken father" in a mean London suburb. In a fit of drunken fury, her father cut her face with a broken bottle when she was twelve. Now, thirty-four years later, she has decided to have the disfiguring scar removed because she "has no longer need of it." Sensationalist investigative journalism pays rather well, so she opts for private care at the hands of a distinguished plastic surgeon who offers her the choice of having the procedure done in a London hospital or at his private clinic in Dorset, Cheverell Manor. Fatally, she opts for the latter. Thus a classic scene is set - an isolated country manor house, a restricted cast of potential suspects, a general air of luxury and ease contrasting hideously with the act of violence that takes place therein. There is even a stone circle and a history of witch burning. This is the stuff that made the 1930s a Golden Age for murder mysteries and James pays a knowing homage to the mode. She even follows the convention of having her victims (there will be more than one) unlovely people whose absence will hardly be missed so as to focus sharply on the ethical and moral issues bound up in crime and punishment. This was a tactic that perhaps worked rather better in the days when a successful detective knew that his efforts would be succeeded by an execution; whether it works so well today is open to question. If it difficult to work up much concern for Rhoda, it is equally hard to care a great deal about anyone on stage. Dalgleish has become so rarefied, so attenuated, as barely to exist except as an idea. Many of the other characters are improbably articulate, able to express precisely what they mean in fully developed paragraphs adorned with appropriate quotations from the great 19th century novelists, but adept at hiding what they feel. The book is, of course, beautifully written and meticulously, perhaps too meticulously, detailed. We learn what everyone is wearing and, especially, eating - largely plain English cooking, carefully prepared and perfectly cooked. From time to time, the Baroness herself breaks through, with a testy complaint about the state of modern university education or contemporary manners in general, but at her advanced age, she has earned the right to complain if she likes. As PD James herself has said, this may be the last Dalgliesh. She is rightfully proud at being with the same publishing house (Faber) for "forty-six unbroken years" (and Faber should be proud also of having survived as an imprint in the current publishing climate). It would be a serious mistake for any reader to begin reading James's long and distinguished body of work with this novel, for it should be seen as a poignant l'envoi to the work as a whole, one which returns to the scenes of past triumphs for a last lingering look and which reiterates the author's belief that love is what matters after all. The condition of being calm of mind, all passion spent may fail to produce much in the way of dramatic tension but those of us who have admired James's work over the years can only be happy that she appears to have achieved it.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, November 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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