Cover Her Face: An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery: 1

Product Information

A great read, as are the other books in the series. I binged them over the course of a few weeks, and enjoyed them all – and shall read them again.

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. Class was becoming less meaningful and less respected. Sexual mores were already shifting and loosening. Charity from upper class people was less valued and more resented. If anyone besides famous people knew what it was like to be a famous person, they would never want to be famous," Sia wrote for Billboard. "Imagine the stereotypical highly opinionated, completely uninformed mother-in-law character and apply it to every teenager with a computer in the entire world. Then add in all bored people, as well as people whose job it is to report on celebrities. Then, picture that creature, that force, criticizing you for an hour straight once a day, every day, day after day." I think we jumped around a bit too much to get a handle on everyone. We are given glimpses of people here and there, but there are too many things left dangling for me as a reader. For example, there is enough said about Stephen Maxie that I wonder if he is being portrayed as asexual or not. Another example is the character of Felix, we find out that is on edge being around any type of police, but I wouldn't consider the Gestapo and Scotland Yard along the same lines. So there were just things like that which confused me a bit while reading. Jane Dalgliesh is Adam Dalgiesh's aunt and his sole living relative until her death prior to Devices and Desires. Introduced in Unnatural Causes, she is described as a very private and cerebral person, not unlike Dalgliesh himself. She is fond of bird watching and possesses a cottage in Suffolk which she later sells and buys a converted windmill in Norfolk, which Dalgliesh inherits upon her death.What I like is a mystery set far in a past where Google can’t give instant answers, mobile phones don’t exist, and the personality of the characters as well as the setting are as important and as interesting as the crime itself. Mrs Janet Erskine: Richard's wife, and mother to their two sons. The family vacationed in Dillmouth at the time when Helen disappeared. The Maxies have taken in Sally Jupp, single mother, and recent resident of a refuge for women in similar ‘trouble’, to be their maid. Sally proves to be ambitious, secretive and a trouble maker. When she is found dead, the family reaction is more affront than surprise. But the motive that seems obvious dangles just out of the reach of provability… only painstaking assessment of the family and guests’ movements and characters will winnow out the culprit. Good old fashioned detective work, in other words. I thought that Dalgliesh at times was a bit too cold. We are given bare bone facts about him, but I wanted more. The Maxie family and their friends were interesting. We get some details on their loyal servant Martha, a woman who believes she has an understanding with Stephen Maxie, Catherine Bowers. And a man who hopes to marry Deborah, Felix Hearne. Walter Fane: the local lawyer's son, he tried a tea plantation in India, failed at that, returned to Dillmouth to practise law in his father's firm, always a bachelor. He proposed to Helen, she went out to marry him, but turned him down when she arrived there, realising she did not love him at all.

James, P. D. (20 November 2008). A Certain Justice. Faber & Faber. ISBN 9780571248704 . Retrieved 25 June 2023– via Google Books. Miss Marple arranges to visit friends in Dillmouth. Miss Marple is often at the house, pulling out bindweed from the neglected garden. She finds the man who once gardened for the Kennedy family, sister and brother, who supplies several useful descriptions of events then. Miss Marple finds the cook from the Halliday household, Edith, who remembers that time well. The Hallidays were soon to move to a house in Norfolk before Helen disappeared. Helen wanted to get away. The servants presumed this was from her husband, but it was not. She was mainly interested in escaping her brother. She did fall in love with Halliday, and loved his daughter. Five of the Dalgliesh novels have been dramatised by Neville Teller for BBC Radio 4. Robin Ellis played Dalgliesh in Cover Her Face (1993; miscredited as Robert Ellis by the BBC announcer) and Devices and Desires (1998). Phillip Franks played the role in A Certain Justice (2005). Dalgliesh was then played by Richard Derrington in A Taste for Death (2008) and The Private Patient (2010). A television version of the novel was produced for Britain's ITV network in 1985. It starred Roy Marsden as Adam Dalgliesh, John Vine as Inspector John Massingham (instead of Detective Sergeant Martin), Phyllis Calvert as Eleanor Maxie, Rupert Frazer as Stephen Maxie, Mel Martin as Deborah Riscoe, Julian Glover as Felix Hearne, and Kim Thomson as Sally Jupp. As the television adaptation was set contemporaneously but the characters' ages had to remain unchanged, Felix Hearne's military service was relocated to Cyprus and a secondary storyline was added about Cypriot drug-dealers. It was filmed at Rainthorpe Hall in Norfolk.The naked sword, however, coming so close to her mention of her “humorous kindred,” also has an ominous note, and foreshadows the violence that will later separate them from each other. This imagery has special resonance since the Duchess just referred to their marriage as “this sacred Gordian,” which alludes to the Gordian knot that could not be untied--instead, Alexander cut it with his sword. In this case, neither the knot nor the Duchess and Antonio will be able to stay whole in the face of violence, no matter how intricately they are bound. Cooper, John; Pyke, B A (1994). Detective Fiction: the collector's guide (Seconded.). Scholar Press. pp.82, 87. ISBN 0-85967-991-8. I have made a soap-boiler costive; it was my masterpiece. Here the dance, consisting of Eight Madmen, with music Helen Spenlove Halliday (née Kennedy): young blonde woman, half-sister to Dr Kennedy, wife to Major Halliday, and stepmother to Gwenda. She was a lively and loving young woman. a b c "Agatha Christie Papers (EUL MS 99) (correspondence between Dame Agatha Christie and her agent 1938- 1976)". Special Collections - Modern Literature Archives. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter.

And I don't get the appeal of Adam Dalgliesh. Your star detective is supposed to have personality, so people want to read about him, you know. The only indication James ever gives that Dalgliesh is not a robot is that every now and then she'll have him think about his dead wife. But other than that, he is as flat as paper. The cover blurbs set him up as a rival to Ngaio Marsh's Alleyn, but um... being boring and mechanical is not actually the same as being cool and stoic. Sorry. a b c d Young, Laurel A. (9 June 2017). P.D. James: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-2890-5. Throughout the play, the Duchess’s own good nature seems to blind her to the true depths of brothers' evil. Not long after this speech, she tells Antonio in regards to them: “All discord, without this circumference,/Is only to be pitied, and not feared” (1.1.459-60). This analysis proves to be very wrong indeed. But in this speech, she admits that this is a “dangerous venture,” and goes so far as to compare it to war, showing the audience that it is not only her ignorance of the true danger of her marriage that leads her into it. Her love for Antonio is such that she proceeds even knowing what could be at stake. The police find Lily's body, strangled, in a copse near the train station. She came by an earlier train, but had Dr Kennedy's letter with her, for the later arrival time. Miss Marple advises Gwenda to tell the police everything. Soon, they are digging up the garden, at the end of the terrace, to find Helen’s body. Gwenda is in the house alone when Dr Kennedy approaches her, ready to kill her by strangling when his attempt to poison her failed. Miss Marple arrives with a container of soapy solution, which she sprays in his eyes to stop the murder attempt.

These lines, spoken by Bosola early in the first act, are the audience’s introduction to the characters of the Cardinal and Ferdinand. They also offer significant insight into Bosola's motivations. Though the metaphor Bosola uses for the brothers is about trees and fruit, it is clear that these are not life-sustaining, sustenance-giving natural objects. Instead, not only are the trees themselves “crooked,” or corrupt, but they are surrounded by “standing pools”--stagnant, putrid water. Because of this, what good they could offer--the fruit that they are “o’erladen with,” essentially money and power--is available only to those comfortable in such foul surroundings. In the first novel, Dalgliesh is a Detective Chief Inspector. He eventually reaches the rank of Commander in the Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard, London. He is an intensely cerebral and private person. He writes poetry, a fact of which his colleagues are fond of reminding him. Several volumes of his poetry have been published. Dalgliesh lives in a flat above the Thames at Queenhithe in the City of London. In the earlier novels he drives a Cooper Bristol, later a Jaguar. He was described as being " tall, dark and handsome" by some women, alluding to Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The flow of the book takes a long while to get going. 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.