The Private Patient

Starred review from January 26, 2009
The latest (and perhaps final) mystery featuring Cmdr. Adam Dalgliesh of the Metropolitan Police Service finds him preparing to confront crucial turning points in his life and career. Meanwhile, he must solve the murder of a ruthlessly inquisitive investigative journalist who was killed in a private Dorset clinic just hours after a pre-eminent plastic surgeon removed her disfiguring facial scar. Dalgliesh and his team unearth a plethora of motives (and an ugly secret or three) as they investigate the inhabitants of the secluded manor that houses the clinic. Rosalyn Landor's lovely, well-bred tones add warmth, color and precision to this fully rounded, compassionately told mystery. She gives every character his or her own voice, clearly delineating gender, age and social class. Her voice combines with James's text to lend sympathy to each character, regardless of what sins he or she may have committed. In every way, this is a perfect auditory experience. A Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 22).

Starred review from September 22, 2008
In James's stellar 14th Adam Dalgliesh mystery (after 2006's The Lighthouse
), the charismatic police commander knows the case of Rhoda Gradwyn, a 47-year-old journalist murdered soon after undergoing the removal of an old disfiguring scar at a private plastic surgery clinic in Dorset, may be his last; James's readers will fervently hope it isn't. Dalgliesh probes the convoluted tangle of motives and hidden desires that swirl around the clinic, Cheverell Manor, and its grimly fascinating suspects in the death of Gradwyn, herself “a stalker of minds” driven by her lifelong passion for rooting out the truth people would prefer left unknown and then selling it for money. Beyond the book's central moral concern, James meditates on universal problems like aging (“the amorphous flattening of self”) and the government's education policy, which targets 50% of the young as university-bound while ensuring that another 40% are uneducated on leaving secondary school. Against her relentless intellectual view of our dying earth, James pits the love she finally grants Dalgleish—sufficient to reinvigorate hope and faith so rare in both fiction and reality today.

October 15, 2008
A new P.D. James novel feels as if a complex and lovely gift has been bestowed upon the reader. With this 14th novel featuring Adam Dalgliesh, there is a definite sense of closure. Investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn arrives at the beautiful Cheverell Manor in Dorset, owned by famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell, to undergo a relatively routine surgical procedure to remove a facial scar and enjoy a private week of recovery. The next day, after a successful surgery, Rhoda is murdered in her room. Commander Dalgliesh and his usual team, Det. Inspector Kate Miskin and Sgt. Francis Benton-Smith, are summoned. As with any James novel, the manor's inhabitants are an insular, odd group requiring Dalgliesh to unravel a tangled mix of motivations in order to flush out the murderer. The end result is satisfying, if not bittersweet, for both Dalgliesh and the reader. Recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 7/08.]Andrea Y. Griffith, Loma Linda Univ. Libs., CA

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2008
At 88, P. D. James has written her eighteenth novel, a feat in itself. Inevitably, there is plenty of summing up going on here, as Commander Adam Dalgleish approaches marriage and contemplates retirement from Scotland Yard. But before either of those life-changing events can take place, there is another case to solve, and Dalgleishs special investigating team, their murder bags packed, are on the road to a remote corner of Dorset, where a well-known investigative journalist has been killed following surgery at a private clinic. As usual, James places Dalgleish, Inspector Kate Miskin, and Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith within an insular community and asks them to restore order to a tightly circumscribed world jarred by unnatural death. We follow the process of interviews with the staff at Cheverell Manor, a grand Tudor home converted to a clinic by a famous plastic surgeon, and we once again begin to formulate our list of suspects along with Dalgleish and the team. This time, though, James pays a bit less attention to the lives of the suspects and more to Dalgleishs inner turmoil (and, to some extent, that of Miskin and Benton-Smith). Longtime readers will be fine with this subtle switch in emphasis, as we sense the winding down of the landmark series and crave every possible insight into a character who has meant so much not only to his fans but also to the mystery genre itself. If this is the last Dalgleish novel, James has struck a fine valedictory note for her hero.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)