Book description
An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery The Peverell Press, a
two-hundred-year-old publishing firm housed in a dramatic
mock-Venetian palace on the Thames, is certainly ripe for change. But
the proposals of its ruthlessly ambitious new managing director,
Gerard Etienne, have made him dangerous enemies - a discarded
mistress, a neglected and humiliated author, and rebellious colleagues
and staff. When Gerard's body is discovered bizarrely desecrated,
there is no shortage of suspects and Dalgliesh and his team are
confronted with a puzzle of extraordinary complexity and a murderer
who is prepared to strike again. 'Outstanding . . . These are books to
escape into, delighting in the sense that you are in safe hands, no
matter how unsafe the subject.' Kate Kellaway, Observer 'An elegantly
written, splendidly atmospheric and immensely satisfying mystery.'
Sunday Telegraph
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 seven great-grandchildren.
