The Lady of Class and Refinement Reigns Still (Death in Holy Orders - P.D. James)

Member Name: chris105

Product:	Death in Holy Orders - P.D. James
Date:	31/12/01 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: vintage P.D. James, brilliantly written and constructed murder mystery

Disadvantages: To non-fans, it might seem slightly quaint, To fans, it might seem more of the same (cruel me...)

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, as Aretha would sing. Respect for the doyenne of mystery writers, who has in 2001 published her latest tome, DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS. I am, of course, speaking of P.D. James - the English writer who is to mystery writing what the Queen Mother is to British nobility. She has spawned innumerable literary siblings, as well as hordes of would-be imitators, and not least has provided the inspiration for one of television's longest-lasting series, Murder She Wrote (starring Angela Lansbury).

P.D. James is rightly recognised as the heir to the throne of Agatha Christie. For both women write (wrote, in the latter case) murder mysteries in the classic vein - typically, there are a well-defined number of suspects with an equally clearly-defined set of motives for murder, and more often than not these suspects are coincidentally found in an enclosed space when a murder occurs, leaving no doubt that this was an inside job. These sort of murder mysteries have created the overused term "whodunit". You all know the sort of mystery I'm talking about here. Everyone writes them these days, with varying degrees of prowess and success.

P.D. James, as I said, stands in a class of her own. Delving into one of her books, one knows exactly what one will find: no literary surprises here (in terms of genre, that is - there are plenty of surprises within the novel!) - a classic-form mystery novel, with one or more cleverly-executed murder(s). What sets James apart is (1) her attention to detail in breathing the most complex of lives into her characters, and (2) her mastery of the English language, a task not often accomplished among her genre peers.

Each new P.D. James is greeted with acclamation by the murder novel fans community. After a lapse of a few years when Ms James was busy compiling her autobiography ("Time to be in Earnest"), she has returned with this new novel, DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS, which as the title implies is s
et in a Church of England theological college in East Anglia. The small community living there, consisting mainly of the priesthood students and their tutors, together with the lay staff of the college and a handful of guests, are living a seemingly peaceful existence until one of the students is found dead, apparently by an accidental fall on the beach. Or was it suicide? Or was it murder? P.D. James's recurring hero, Commander Adam Dalgliesh, is sent to investigate - only to have to spread his investigation as the murder virus spreads, seeking other victims among the community, and culminating in a particularly gruesome and graphic murder inside the church.

As Dalgliesh and his team investigate, hitherto-obscured motives for murder come to light, and intriguingly the very fate of the college is put into question with an old Will bequeathing the property to.......

And so it goes on. Surely you'll have got the gist of the style by now. As I said above, reading P.D. James one knows exactly what one will find - with the good and bad that this entails. The good being that the quality of the mystery is assured, superbly packaged and delivered with refined old-world good taste and crafts(wo)manship, with none of the vulgar expedients found necessarily by some of her peers. The bad, of course, being that there is nothing earth-shatteringly original in the delivery of the novel.

Being cruel, one could say that even perfection can become ever so slightly tedious after a time.

But that was being very very cruel.

And James deserves better.

The book is brilliantly conceived, woven and delivered, I assure you. I do not completely agree with those who criticised this book for its lack of action-film pace and originality, for a James Bond finale is not the reason one purchases a James book. It is like drinking a vintage wine and complaining that it isn't inebriating enough. On the other hand, I can understand that
in an age of twenty murder films per day on television and countless tomes of (admittedly mostly inferior) mysteries on bookshelves one would perhaps feel a slight pinch of deja-vu.

Indeed, if I were to pinpoint a fault in this excellent book, it would be precisely this: the writing is so polished and the technique so refined that everything proceeds too perfectly. I am, of course, being very spoilt about this. Ms James, whose novels have kept me company over the past two decades at least, has spoilt me with her flawlessly-constructed novels. Thus I always expect a higher degree of perfection, as it were.

While undoubtedly breathtaking in scope and in attention to detail, the preponderance of red herrings in which we are made to wade leaves us expecting some mind-boggling denouement. Which sadly never occurs. There is a conclusion to the mystery of course, and a very intelligent one at that, yet I could not help but feel (perhaps due to the fact that the climax was reached three-fourths of the way into the novel, not later) that the solution was too matter-of-fact. I was awaiting some other, final, revelation. But my appetite was not to be assuaged, it seems.

Do not, though, let my scathing pettiness keep you from reading DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS. If you're in any way a thriller fan, you could do much worse than read this. Be assured that you'll be transported, body and spirit, to East Anglia and its isolated college. The descriptions are beautifully evocative, written in that vanishing art of old-fashioned story-telling.

"Leaving the car, he leaned against the gatepost and shut his eyes to listen to the silence. These were the moments he craved in an over-busy life, the knowledge that no one in the world knew exactly where he was or could reach him. The small almost indistinguishable sounds of the countryside came to him on the sweet-smelling air, a distant unidentifiable bird-song, the susurration of the breeze in the t
all grasses, the creaking of a branch over his head. After he had finished his lunch he walked vigorously down the lane for a half-mile..."

James writes with an enviable balance of detached sangfroid and warm characterisation. Her descriptions and evocations of the backgrounds of characters are breathtakingly evocative. Perfectly solemn paragraphs are without warning pierced with dry humour. In the Author's Note, for example, while stating that the novel is a work of fiction she clarifies that she did not mean "to suggest for one moment that visitors to such a college in search of rest and spiritual renewal are in danger of finding a more permanent peace than they had in mind."

And if this isn't class, ladies and gentlemen, then what is?

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