Book description
Commander Dalgliesh returns in P. D. James's classical detective
novel full of atmosphere and suspense, set in her beloved East Anglia.
Death in Holy Orders is set in an Anglican theological college on a
desolate stretch of the East Anglian coast, a location which she has
made particularly her own. When the body of one of the students is
found on the shore smothered by a fall of sand, his wealthy father
demands that Scotland Yard re-examines the verdict of accidental
death. Dalgliesh has visited St Anselm's in his boyhood and, as he is
due for a holiday, agrees to pay a visit, expecting no more than a
nostalgic return to old haunts and a straightforward examination of
the evidence given at the inquest. Instead he finds himself embroiled
in one of the most horrific and puzzling cases of his career. Other
visitors come to the college on the weekend of his arrival, not all of
them with benign intent. One will never leave it alive. Death in Holy
Orders, a masterly exploration of an isolated and beleagured community
coping with the evil and disruption of murder, has all the qualities
which distinguish P. D. James as a novelist: the sensitive evocation
of place, a complex and credible mystery, respect for forensic detail
and the tension of a plot that never flags.
P. D. James served in the forensic and criminal justice departments
of the Home Office until her retirement in 1979. She was made a Life
Peer in 1991. Her detective novels include Cover Her Face, An Unsuitable
Job for a Woman, Death of an Expert Witness, A Taste for Death, Original
Sin, A Certain Justice, Death in Holy Orders and The Murder Room. Many
of them have been adapted for television. Her autobiography Time to be
in Earnest appeared in 1991.
