Book description
An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Two men lie in a welter of blood in the
vestry of St Matthew's Church, Paddington, thier throats brutally
slashed. One is Sir Paul Berowne, a baronet and recently-resigned
Minister of the Crown, the other an alcoholic vagrant. Dalgliesh and
his team, set up to investigate crimes of particular sensitivity, are
faced with a case of extraordinary complexity as they discover the
Berowne family's veneer of prosperous gentility conceals ugly and
dangerous secrets. 'P. D. James is a remarkable writer.' Ruth Rendell
'One of our greatest living crime writers.' Daily Express
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.
