Book description
A Cordelia Gray Mystery Hired to protect a beautiful but neurotic
actress, Cordelia Gray soon becomes embroiled in a case as dangerous
to her own life as it is mysterious. Clarissa Lisle hopes to make a
spectacular comeback in a production of The Duchess of Malfi, to be
played in Ambrose Gorringe's sinister castle at Courcy Island.
Cordelia is there to ensure her safety following the appearance of a
number of poison-pen letters. But it soon becomes clear that all are
in danger. Trapped within the walls of the Gothic castle, the
treacherous past of the island re-emerges, and everyone seems to have
a motive for sending Clarissa 'down, down to hell'. Marking the return
of Cordelia Gray, The Skull beneath the Skin is a complex mystery
which more than lives up to its predecessor, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman.
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 and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature (US).
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 seven great-grandchildren.
