Indian Writing

I read this P.D.James novel for a book club meeting this month. Pity that I ended up not being able to attend the meeting (which was to happen at the newly redone Tea Centre) because I was stuck near the airport, in traffic, after seeing off my father and brother. Sometimes I wonder what we’re doing living in a city where you can’t even predict how long it will take to get from one place to another.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book. It’s an Adam Dalgleish novel, 14th in the series (and likely to be the last, as Dalgleish occasionally reflects within the novel), and I’ve generally liked reading about this Jaguar-driving detective who is also a published poet. I enjoy reading P.D.James: especially the geography, the rich, detailed landscapes, the intricate descriptions of houses and living spaces (in this case, not only a sprawling Tudor manor in Dorset, but also a cottage on the manor estate, and a narrow London house, in the wonderfully-named Absolution Alley, which has one room on each floor, beginning with mullioned windows on the ground floor and opening out to the sky on the top floor).

Rhoda Gradwyn is an investigative journalist who checks in at an exclusive private clinic in a Dorset country manor for plastic surgery to remove a scar on her cheek. It’s no spoiler when I tell you that she is murdered soon after, because that information is provided to us in the first line of the novel. It looks like the work of an insider, and James provides a variety of suspects, endowing each of them with a detailed back story and, of course, a possible motive. These include the surgeon, George Chandler-Powell (but would he really murder his patient after putting in so much work on reconstructing her cheek?); his assistant Marcus Westhall who is just going off to Africa; Marcus’s sister Candace, who assists at the clinic office, and who was never really very happy with the idea of an investigative journalist coming to Cheverell Manor; and Flavia Holland, the attractive nurse in charge at the clinic. Then there is Helena Haverland, nee Cressett, whose family once owned the manor but who now works here as a general administrator; her old governess, Lettie Frensham, who assists with the bookkeeping at the clinic; Kimberley Bostock, the assistant cook and her very competent husband Dean, who dreams of opening their own restaurant; Sharon Bateman, the girl who helps with the cleaning and who is obsessed with the macabre story of a with-burning at the nearby Cheverell Stones; and Mox, the gardener. Oh, and there’s Robin Boyton, the Westhalls’ cousin and a close friend of Rhoda Gradwyn, who has come to stay in one of the estate cottages during Rhoda’s recovery.

A number of delectable red herrings are strewn along the way, including the fictional plot of another detective novel. The police procedural part of the novel is nicely done, beginning with the phone call that pulls Dalgleish out of his meeting with fiancee Emma Lavenham’s Oscar Wilde-spouting professor father. He is assisted by the intelligent and competent Kate Miskin (though there’s a crying scene that I wish James hadn’t thrust on her) and the very good-looking Benton-Smith.

While the main action is restricted to the manor, the estate and a nearby cottage that becomes the incident room for Dalgleish’s team, I also like the way in which James manages to bring into the novel a number of telling observations about class, race, same-sex relationships, urban violence, and contemporary life. Even characters who appear over just a page or two are vividly sketched: an intelligent priest, a dedicated educator, a bright and professional literary agent.

Quite an achievement for the 88-year old crime writer.