Book description
A piercing scream, shattering the evening calm, brings
Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh hurrying from his literary party to the
nearby Steen Psychiatric Clinic, where he discovers the body of a
woman sprawled on the basement floor, a chisel thrust through her
heart. As Dalgliesh probes beneath the apparently unruffled calm of
the clinic, he discovers that many an intrigue lies hidden behind the
Georgian terrace's unassuming façade. Professionally, he has never
known the taste of failure. Now, for the first time, he feels unsure
of his own mastery as he battles to unmask a cool killer who is
proving to be his intellectual equal, and who is poised to strike again.
P. D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge
High School for Girls. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National
Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the
Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. All
that experience has been used in her novels. She is a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts and has
served as a Governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, where
she was Chairman of the Literary Advisory Panel, on the Board of the
British Council and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She has
won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and
Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster
Award. She has received honorary degrees from seven British
universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983 and was created a life peer
in 1991. In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors.
She lives in London and Oxford and has two daughters, five
grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
