Book description
Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh had been looking forward to a quiet
holiday at his aunt's cottage on Monksmere Head, one of the
furthest-flung spots on the remote Suffolk coast. With nothing to do
other than enjoy long wind-swept walks, tea in front of the crackling
wood fire and hot buttered toast, Dalgliesh was relishing the thought
of a well-earned break. However, all hope of peace is soon shattered
by murder. The mutilated body of a local crime writer, Maurice Seaton,
floats ashore in a drifting dinghy to drag Adam Dalgliesh into a new
and macabre investigation.
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.
