Book description
Commander Dalgliesh is recuperating from a life-threatening illness
when he receives a call for advice from an elderly friend who works as
a chaplain in a home for the disabled on the Dorset coast. Dalgliesh
arrives to discover that Father Baddeley has recently and mysteriously
died, as has one of the patients at Toynton Grange. Evidently the home
is not quite the caring community it purports to be. Dalgliesh is
determined to discover the truth of his friend's death, but further
fatalities follow and his own life is in danger as he unmasks the evil
at the heart of Toynton Grange. 'More expertise from P. D. James. The
writing is excellent, the pitch of final terror beautifully
sustained.' Evening Standard 'She writes like an angel. Every
character is clearly drawn. Her atmosphere is unerringly, chillingly
convincing. And she manages all this without for a moment slowing down
the drive and tension of an exciting mystery.' Marcel Berlins, The Times
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.
