PD James is now 87 and this week, in an interview, she said she was busy working on her latest book. One can only hope that she is with us for a long time yet and keeps producing her superb Adam Dalgliesh novels as each one is an unfailing pleasure to read.
I came late to PD James, picking up one of her books at a book fair for 50p and thinking that it looked interesting. It was A Taste for Death and opened with the discovery of two bodies in a church in London, both with their throats cut, one of them being a Cabinet Minister who had recently resigned from the Government. So an intriguing premise. I have read many others since then, but not all, as I wish to have a few in reserve for a rainy day.
I could not resist buying A Certain Justice however, as it has just been republished and this time in a Penguin format. The books used to be multi-coloured: light blue for big ideas; orange for fantastic fiction; pink for distant lands; dark blue for real lives; purple for viewpoints and green for mystery. There are 36 of these titles in the relevant colours to celebrate 36 years of Penguin and they are very beguiling and tempt you to part with your money.
Once I started reading this, I remembered that I had, in fact, read it before but had totally forgotten the twists and turns of the plot, so was able to come to it still keen to solve the puzzle. As before, I failed utterly.
Venetia Aldridge, QC is a distinguished barrister with a knack of arousing dislike in her colleagues and friends. Her fierce drive to be the best and her ambition has led to an estrangement from her daughter and conflict with her fellow barristers in Chambers. On the retirement of the current Head of Chambers, Venetia will take over, an event that is not greeted with any joy by Dyysdale Laud, who thinks it should be him, by the Clerk Harold Naughton who Venetia wish to be rid of and replace with an office manager, by the timid secretary who Venetia despises and other colleague who wish her ill. Venetia's intolerance and impatience with them all is exacerbated by the crisis with her daughter Olivia who has become engaged to a young man, Ashe, who Venetia has just defended in a murder case. He was acquitted because of her brilliant defence but it is clear that he is guilty. For the first time in her life Venetia is powerless to act.
And then one morning, Harold Naughton walks to Chambers, opens the door and finds Venetia, stabbed in the heart. So who did it? Call for Adam Dalgleish.
As always, with PD James, the writing is elegant and I keep using the phrase 'not a single wasted dot or 
comma' probably more than I should, but it is the only way to describe the way this book is written. I do like clean straightforward writing, nothing fancy with lots of unnecessary verbs and adjectives that fuss and flounce and obscure the point that is being made. I can't stand frills and this carries through in the clothes I like, the way I decorate and I was going to say it applies with music as well, but there the analogy falls down. If I am going to follow this point through my favourite composer should be Bach, clean, mathematical and spot on in every way. But, I don't like Bach (yes I know, please don't start bombarding me with shock horror comments) and I adore Wagner and anyone less elegant and non-fussy that the Master I cannot imagine.
But here is an example of the writing which I hope shows what I am trying to say in my very muddled way:
"London had laid its spell on him and though his love-affair with the city, as with all loves, had had its moment s of disillusion, disappointment and threatened infidelity, the spell had remained.....the panorama beneath him never failed to enchant. He saw it always as an artefact sometimes a coloured lithograph in the delicate shades of a spring morning, sometimes a pen and ink drawing, every spire, every tower, every tree lovingly delineated, sometimes and oil, strong and vigorous. Tonight it was a psychedelic water coloour, splashes of scarlet and gray layering the blue black of the night sky, the streets running with molten red and green as the traffic lights changed, the buildings with their squares of white windows pasted like coloured cut outs against the backcloth of the night."
I can almost see London at night in front of me when reading this particular paragraph. I think PD James is a master writer and because she writes just 'murder' stories, is under rated. I bet if she sat down and wrote something totally different she could walk away with the Booker.
Adam Dalgleish is in the tradition of elegant, fastidious detectives from Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn to Sayers Lord Peter, vulnerable and at times capable of great sensitivity. Odd how the British detectives (I count Ngaio Marsh as British as the vast majority of her stories are set in England), despite multiple murders and gory details, manage to maintain this air of tea on the lawn, and servants in the kitchen below stairs, even though Adam certainly doesn't fit into that category.
The Queen of the genre is, of course, Dame Agatha Christie, and I am currently reading and enjoying a new biography of her. Makes me realise once again how very much I do enjoy 'a nice murder'...
