Cover Her Face: An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery: 1

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The treatment of the victim's status as a single mum will remind all of us that we are extemely fortunate to be living now, not five decades ago.

The mystery plot has a lot of painstakingly crafted red herrings and clues, but I just didn't care enough to be interested in the solution. When the body of Sally Jupp is discovered in her bedroom - the door bolted from the inside - the occupants of Martingale house are sure that the blame for this unthinkable crime will fall on an unknown intruder. Investigating the violent death at the manor house, Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is embroiled in the complicated passions beneath the calm surface of English village life. At the time, Agatha Christie was still the dominant voice in the field, selling millions of mysteries each year and cranking out new novels at an annual pace. For James, murder is not a parlor game, even if, in this novel, she is relying on the formula of parlor-game mysteries.The recipient of many prizes and honors, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991 and was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame in 2008.

I think that James wanted to make sure she set the scene, but it takes it a long while to get going and I was confused about who was who at first. Until the evening when he announces to the employer that from now on he will live in her house in the position of not a servant, but a daughter-in-law. I thought it was about time I listened to the entire Adam Dalgleish series—I’ve read some of them but certainly none of the early ones. I didn’t get to know Adam Dalgliesh as well as I would like to in this first book, but I will certainly go on to the next book to see if I can remedy that situation. D. James published Cover Her Face, her first murder mystery featuring Detective Chief-Inspector Adam Dalgleish of Scotland Yard.If the screams of all earth's living creatures were one scream of pain, surely it would shake the stars. Chief Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh investigates the death of Alice Liddell who ran a home for unwed mothers. But, if you isolate his face, the emotion behind it seems to be resoluteness allied with a close concentration and a complex, active mind. Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh and Detective Sergeant Martin arrive and begin their investigation. Sally works at the local manor house for the Maxie family, and it is apparent that eldest son Stephen has more than a passing interest in her.

Although I loved them both, they are more fantastical to me than Dalgliesh, who was more human, more real. Dalgliesh, James’s master detective who rises from chief inspector in the first novel to chief superintendent and then to commander, is a serious, introspective person, moralistic yet realistic. James expanded beyond the mystery genre in The Children of Men (1992; film 2006), which explores a dystopian world in which the human race has become infertile. What she also captures so well, in my opinion, is the way that society was changing in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. He is a good man, a poet, and he stands and speaks for Phyllis's humanity, a humanity that meant she could imagine what it was to be so overrun by desire or envy or anger or vengefulness that a person would commit a terrible crime.Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. D. James (author of Death Comes to Pemberley, The Murder Room and Children of Men ) plots a complex story of family secrets and suspicion.

The lower classes are decidedly uppity, with their carefully tended council houses and a distinct touch of attitude toward their betters. It was rather satisfying to sink my teeth into a book fully of layers and complexities due to the author's good command of the language.The edition of "War and Peace" I read had a nice, thick bookmark with all the main characters and their various names printed on that bookmark, front and back. Even so, I did have some trouble keeping track of the characters, and I only solved the mystery near the end, which is better than my usual not-solving-the-mystery-at-all track record since the injury. When the body of Sally Jupp is discovered in her bedroom - the door bolted from the inside - the occupants of Martingale House are sure that the blame for this unthinkable crime will fall on an unknown intruder.