Adam Dalgliesh #1: Cover Her Face
- P.D. James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I came across a recommendation for this series (on my online reading group, I think) for people who love British crime novels by authors like Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. By now, I have read four books in the series, so l have a more informed thought about the series itself, but I am going to try to limit this review to this book only.
What I liked about this book was the very Christie-like atmosphere it created - complete with a village setting where everyone knows everyone else, an elite family residing in their large home that the family has lived in for generations, their fortunes depleted over time yet their need to keep up appearances surviving, and a public event where critical events take place. Like Christie's novels, it is a closed-room kind of murder mystery with a limited set of suspects and nearly everyone having a motive.
The author takes her time to develop the characters, and you get a deeper insight into their personality gradually over the course of the story. The atmosphere is also developed well, with attention to detail to build up the background as well as a comprehensive picture of the events. I liked the prose, intelligent and infused with a dry wit.
However, I felt there also were several issues with the style as well as the plot. The beginning was very slow and confusing. For the first two days, I fell asleep after reading only a few pages - something that happens rarely to me while reading any book, let alone a murder mystery. In the initial chapters, I had a challenge keeping track of the characters. And later on, there were times when I had to go back and check whose thoughts or dialogue I was reading. Most of the major characters were unlikeable, one of them quite over the top and stereotyped.
In terms of treatment of the mystery, I was disconcerted to find the detective relying often on his intuition rather than logic or facts, particularly to determine whether or not a person was telling the truth. When he presents the final solution of the mystery, he gathers everyone (again like Christie’s Poirot). But unlike Christie, James does not describe the detective’s process of arriving at the solution, but only his conclusion. The root of the puzzle lies in a coincidence, but then even the grand dame has been known to rely on extraordinary circumstances, so one can't really fault the author on this.
Overall it was an enjoyable read and interested me enough to look out for further novels in the series.
What I liked about this book was the very Christie-like atmosphere it created - complete with a village setting where everyone knows everyone else, an elite family residing in their large home that the family has lived in for generations, their fortunes depleted over time yet their need to keep up appearances surviving, and a public event where critical events take place. Like Christie's novels, it is a closed-room kind of murder mystery with a limited set of suspects and nearly everyone having a motive.
The author takes her time to develop the characters, and you get a deeper insight into their personality gradually over the course of the story. The atmosphere is also developed well, with attention to detail to build up the background as well as a comprehensive picture of the events. I liked the prose, intelligent and infused with a dry wit.
However, I felt there also were several issues with the style as well as the plot. The beginning was very slow and confusing. For the first two days, I fell asleep after reading only a few pages - something that happens rarely to me while reading any book, let alone a murder mystery. In the initial chapters, I had a challenge keeping track of the characters. And later on, there were times when I had to go back and check whose thoughts or dialogue I was reading. Most of the major characters were unlikeable, one of them quite over the top and stereotyped.
In terms of treatment of the mystery, I was disconcerted to find the detective relying often on his intuition rather than logic or facts, particularly to determine whether or not a person was telling the truth. When he presents the final solution of the mystery, he gathers everyone (again like Christie’s Poirot). But unlike Christie, James does not describe the detective’s process of arriving at the solution, but only his conclusion. The root of the puzzle lies in a coincidence, but then even the grand dame has been known to rely on extraordinary circumstances, so one can't really fault the author on this.
Overall it was an enjoyable read and interested me enough to look out for further novels in the series.
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