A Mind to Murder by P.D. James

For some reason, I rarely allow myself the luxury of reading books in a series one after the other, back to back. I don’t know why that is. I certainly don’t have anyone dictating my reading besides myself. I don’t even participate in a lot of buddy reads or book groups because I know that as soon as I have to read a book I immediately lose all interest in it. That is to say, my reading time is my own, and for once I acted like it. As I mentioned in my review of Cover Her Face, I started reading the second book in P.D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh series, A Mind to Murder, immediately after reading the first. It felt like the biggest indulgence, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh is at an autumn sherry party given by his publishers in celebration of the third reprint of his first volume of poetry. I failed to mention in my review of Cover Her Face that as well as being an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, he is also a poet. The fact gets a mention in that book when someone involved in the murder investigation upon being introduced to Dalgliesh asked him if he is Adam Dalgliesh the poet. Dalgliesh’s poetry writing does not play a part in that book, nor does it in this one except to place him across a square in London from Steen Psychiatric Clinic, the site of our murder. 

The body of a woman has been discovered in the basement of the private clinic with a chisel through her heart and a carving made by one of the patients in art therapy resting across her chest. The victim, Miss Bolam, administrative officer of the clinic is not a well-liked person, which means just about everyone is a suspect. Still, this murder should be a cinch for someone of Dalgliesh’s calibre to solve. He has not yet had an unsolved case, a fact that I found very surprising when I came across it. Then I reminded myself that this is a work of fiction. It seems equally unbelievable that someone with Dalgliesh’s track record would—apparently, for the first time—doubt his ability to solve a case. I expect we are supposed to believe that a smartypants doctor from the clinic is most likely the murderer. But I found Dalgliesh’s doubts and his concern that the killer would strike again a bit contrived. Unless I missed something—always a possibility—there was no indication at that point that anyone else’s life was in danger. Of course, there is the possibility that we are just supposed to assume that Dalgliesh knows something, or at least suspects something, that we do not.

The next three paragraphs reveal something that happens at the end of Cover Her Face. I don’t reveal anything to do with the murder in that one, just something minor relating to Dalgliesh’s personal life. If you have not yet read Cover Her Face and would prefer to preserve your reading experience I would recommend skipping the next three paragraphs.

SPOILERS AHEAD! Consider yourself warned...

I may have been a bit hasty in saying that Dalgliesh’s career as a poet has nothing to do with the story except to put him conveniently close to the site of a murder. It also puts him in the way of Deborah Riscoe, who readers of Cover Her Face will recognise as the daughter at Martingale, the manor house where the parlour maid was murdered. At the end of that book, we were left with the distinct impression that Dalgliesh and Deborah fancied each other and perhaps something may have come of it had the circumstances been different. Well, here Dalgliesh gets his second chance. Deborah is working at Dalgliesh’s publisher, Hearne and Illingworth, doing shorthand, typing, and “general dogsbody,” as she puts it (16). They just get to talking when Dalgliesh receives a phone call from Scotland Yard. Dalgliesh excuses himself saying he won’t be a moment, but knowing that he won’t be returning to the party (18).

He did not see Deborah Riscoe again, and made no effort to find her. His mind was already on the job ahead and he felt that he had been saved, at best from a snub and, at worst, from folly. It had been a brief, tantalizing, inconclusive and unsettling encounter but, already, it was in the past. (20)

In a way, this brief insight into Dalgliesh’s personal life feels a bit tacked on. These glimpses into his yearning for a romantic partner quite literally bookend the main story line, the murder. But I think the intention here is to show that Dalgliesh only allows himself to “indulge his thoughts” when he isn’t occupied with the job (18). In Cover Her Face, it is only at the end of the book, after the murder has been solved and the murderer is in custody, that we get any indication of his interest in Deborah Riscoe as anything other than a suspect. We see the same pattern here, and I wonder if it continues throughout the series with Deborah and Dalgliesh crossing paths. It does seem a possibility with Deborah working for Dalgliesh’s publisher. I would love to see Dalgliesh progress and grow over the course of the series, and settle down with—if not Deborah—then someone else. Because as it stands, he does not seem to have much in his life besides the job and his writing. His first book of poetry appears to be a success, so there is always the possibility that he could write full-time when he retires from the Yard. But I don’t think that would be enough to keep the demons at bay. Because although he does not appear to dwell on the loss of his wife and son, he does give off the impression that he is just managing to keep is grief in check.

I am a great one for complaining about something and then completely skipping over the positive, which is what I fear I have done in this review. But I assure you, despite what felt to me like a contrived build up in tension by making Dalgliesh doubt his abilities, overall I really enjoyed this book. Set inside a private clinic with the suspects limited to the people inside the building at the time, this one feels a lot like another manor house mystery. Being situated in London, instead of in the countryside, it is different enough from the first book without completely taking us out of the safe confines of the closed circle mystery. I really loved that A Mind to Murder is set in October. The air is crisp. The nights are closing in. And there is something both unsettling and expectant about the month of Halloween. Anything could happen. October is my birth month, so I may be a tad biased. However, autumn just feels like the right time of year for these books to me. I took a glance a the third book in the series, Unnatural Causes, and found that it starts in October as well. Perhaps P.D. James was of the same mind.  

This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell’s. As a Blackwell’s Affiliate, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you decide to make a purchase through one of the links on my website. I recommend Blackwell’s because I use them myself. This helps support me in sharing—what I hope is—valuable content. Thank you for your support!

Cover Her Face by P.D. James

I have been (very) slowly collecting the P.D. James books Faber published with the beautiful covers illustrated by Angela Harding. And by slowly, I mean I had a total of four. Two that I got secondhand and were so dirty they needed replacing, and two others. Hardly a collection at all really, but I figured I had time to acquire them slowly. I like to remind myself that there is no rush to collect books when they are in print. It keeps the mad book buying in check. Then it happened. Faber released the Adam Dalgliesh series with new covers. Without changing the ISBNs, might I add. They were coming out in instalments and I had only heard about the change after the first 9 or 10 had been reissued. I rushed to order the remaining four, and despite ordering a month before the new covers were supposed to come out, three of the four books that arrived were the new ones. What a disappointment! 

This is a longwinded way of saying how thankful I am that I was able to find seven more of the Angela Harding covers after that initial incident. There are fourteen books in the Dalgliesh, so I do not have a full set in the Angela Harding covers, but I am telling myself this is fine. Who knows! Perhaps I will find the others secondhand at some point in the future. Preferably without mysterious stains on them like the other two I have. I do hope so!

My takeaway is that if in future I do decide to collect a number of books in a series to either commit to buying them as they are issued or buy one per month until I complete the collection. Otherwise, just don’t do it. 

I think I have rattled on long enough about my little collecting conundrum. Let’s chat about the first book in this series, Cover Her Face.

Faber originally published Cover Her Face in 1962. The dust wrapper has a striking illustration by Charles Mozley of a woman’s face. With just a few brushstrokes the artist has perfectly captured the stillness of death. It is as striking as it is grim. Certainly a cover to grab one’s attention, but I’m not sure if I would have been attracted to it, though I do think the that cover both encapsulates the kind of sparseness that I find in P.D. James’s writing as well as the serious crime in this book. The Angela Harding covers do add a certain romanticised ideal to these books that make them more easily palatable, I think.

St. Cedd’s Church fête is held on the grounds of Martingale manor house on a July afternoon. What with running stalls, ushering nosy visitors out of the house, and checking on her bedridden husband, it’s a busy day for Mrs. Maxie, especially with guests staying over who have come up for the festivities. Oh, and the sudden engagement of her son and the parlour maid, which was not on the agenda. But the final straw is when the aforementioned parlour maid is found dead the next morning. Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is called in and the household is not at all helpful with the investigation. 

The P.D. James novels I have read have felt slow-paced for the genre, and this one was no different. These are quiet novels with few dramatic moments. That might be why when peace gets interrupted—as we know it must, these are crime novels after all—it hits all the harder. 

Dalgliesh is himself a quiet man. He is more than competent, working along with Detective Sergeant Martin who is junior to him in position, but not in age. Dalgliesh is as meticulous and methodical as one would expect of a Scotland Yard detective. He is also obsessive. Living and breathing the job to an extent that he  might not have done, had his wife and son not died. 

One of the things that always strikes me about P.D. James’s novels is how out of date they feel. That doesn’t quite explain it. Neither does calling her novels old or dated. What I mean is that I doubt I would be able to guess what year they were published in. The setting of this one is “a typical Elizabethan manor house” that is very well-staffed, especially for the time (57). It could be the setting for a novel from a decade or two earlier. But then there is the unexpected clash of the modern. In this case, it is the unwed mother working as a parlour maid, who ends up dead. If this was set in the interwar years, I don’t think you would find an unwed mother working at a house like Martingale, even in fiction. Especially not one who was allowed to have her baby living in with her. The parlour maid, Sally, had been recommended by the woman running the local home for unwed mothers, a Miss Liddell, and Mrs. Maxie is busy looking after her bed-bound husband, so the family do not pay much attention to the servants as long as they keep the house running smoothly. 

I won’t give any more details about Sally’s death, than what you would find out from reading the back cover copy. But I will say that I think P.D. James does a good job of subverting reader expectations regarding Sally. Well, to an extent anyway. Sally is our victim, so she certainly does not escape unscathed. However, there is no moralising lesson about Sally’s death being a punishment for her life choices. Thank goodness. She is a good mother, though perhaps not the best parlour maid, if the cook is to be believed. 

Martha had to admit that the baby was at first very little trouble. She put this down to Miss Liddell’s excellent training since it was beyond her comprehension that bad girls could be good mothers. James was a placid child who, for his first two months at Martingale, was content to be fed at his accustomed times without advertising his hunger too loudly and who slept between his feeds in milky contentment. This could not last indefinitely. […] Sally was beginning to spend more time with her child and Martha would often see her during the mornings, her bright head bent over the pram where the sudden emergence of a chubby leg or arm showed that Jimmy’s long periods of sleep were a thing of the past. No doubt his demands would increase. So far Sally had managed to keep up with the work allotted to her and to reconcile the demands of her son with those of Martha. (19-20)

I like that we get a glimpse of the woman that Sally was when her guard was down. With many murder mysteries, there is an unknowability to the victim, and this book is no different. Because the same woman who “screamed with laughter” at her son when he fussed over his food and “caught him to her in a whirl of endearments, loved and fondled him” also shows up to the fête in a similar dress to the daughter of the house, throws her engagement to Mrs. Maxie’s son in the woman’s face, in front of a table full of guests, and threatens to divulge more than one person’s dark secret if they fail to tow the line.

P.D. James answered my burning questions about Sally Jupp. Because as the story goes along I became more and more interested in solving the mystery of Sally. And thank goodness, Dalgliesh has the presence of mind to realise that to uncover a killer, he must first uncover the victim. The title, Cover Her Face is more than just a line from this book where a character quotes John Webster’s play, The Duchess of Malfi. (Although, I should perhaps have read The Duchess of Malfi before even addressing the reference. Oh, well. Too late now!) The full line is, “Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young” (IV, ii). There is the heavy suggestion that Dalgliesh, if not ‘cover her face,’ at least, look outside of Martingale for Sally’s murderer. But Dalgleish knows when he is on to something, and gives a most emphatic ‘no’. 

I had such wonderful time with this one that I did something I rarely do. I went ahead and started reading the next book in this series right away. I will have a review for that one up shortly. For now I will say that I enjoyed A Mind to Murder even more than Cover Her Face. I am very much looking forward to continuing on with this series, though I may have to skip some titles until I find those coveted Angela Harding covers!

Speaking of which, I have shared affiliate links to the current editions of Cover Her Face and A Mind to Murder. However, if you prefer the Angela Harding covers, I got mine from an online bookseller in the UK called Postscript Books. They are selling the first four Dalgliesh books together. (You can see them in the last photo.) This is not sponsored or an affiliate link, but I was really impressed with the care they took in packaging my orders, and I will always advocate buying from small businesses, like Postscript Books, when possible. It appears that sell a lot of publisher remnants, and they recently acquired some Handheld Press titles, but they also sell new, non-remnant books as well.

This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell’s. As a Blackwell’s Affiliate, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you decide to make a purchase through one of the links on my website. I recommend Blackwell’s because I use them myself. This helps support me in sharing—what I hope is—valuable content. Thank you for your support!