Synopsis: The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed. Another student dies equally mysteriously, and it is up to Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard to unmask a killer who has decided to prescribe murder as the cure for all ills.
Spoilers in penultimate paragraph.
In preparation for writing this review, I skimmed some of my previous reviews and 1-5 star ratings of the other P.D. James books I’ve read. To my surprise, I’ve rated most of them as 3-stars; a little above average. Some I didn’t rate, however, judging by the reviews I think they rate higher than that, but still no 5-stars. So why do I keep coming back to Dame James?
I think it’s the mix of usual and unusual that does it. She has a very distinct formula to weaving her tales and that starts with the people involved with the crime. Usually she starts out with some environmental back story that features the victims (there is usually more than one) and the suspects. Much like a Christie mystery, we’re left to judge these people for ourselves. And boy, is there a lot to judge. Usually there are a bunch of jerks and a few bright spots of sanity. What an eye for the repugnant personality trait James has. Some of her characters have so many of them it’s a wonder they weren’t murdered themselves long ago. The nurses, instructors and other staff members in this book have no compunction about showing their nasty sides. No pulling punches, no being conciliatory to preserve peace, no concessions or allowances; just all vitriol all the time.
And I have to include Dalgliesh as one of the jerks. He seriously is. He instantly dislikes most of the people he comes into contact with, writing scurrilous monologues about them in his head. Then he will reach the point where he can’t hold it in any longer and will deliberately lash out at someone in a subtly cruel or manipulative way. Oh with what glee does he push people’s buttons. Sometimes we’re glad to see him get away with it, but sometimes it’s just antagonistic and mean. If this is not enough to underscore his innate anti-social personality, we also have to have snotty little asides about other people’s tastes and how superior his is to theirs. I do like that she often gives us views of Dalgliesh through the eyes of others. His underlings are particularly good at skewering him in their private thoughts. No one dares to do it to his face though.
In some ways he’s insufferable, but that’s only based on early books. In later ones she softens him by describing his inner struggles with poetry, with ethics and with the deaths of his wife and son. He also struggles with duty and how far he has to go in the name of it. It’s an old-fashioned idea and one that underscores the rigid bonds of his personality. Underneath it though, he’s thoughtful and not without mercy. Those come later though, and a reader starting at the beginning of the series will have to look past his abrasive persona to the good points of him and the way she crafts her novels.
Mostly that hinges on the plots. The crimes are usually pretty personally motivated, meaning there is some really neurotic reason for the killing. James’s novels aren’t peppered by psychopaths randomly killing based on some delusion, and that makes them all the more devious. This book is a great example because everyone in it is supposed to be a caring and gentle healthcare provider. They live in a claustrophobia inducing world that would make most of us really squirm; the lack of privacy and autonomy, the constant being at the beck-and-call of everyone else, the confinement and routine; all designed to have us sympathize, and we do. When eventually the killer is revealed (which I almost never get right and is only done after Dalgliesh does a lot of interviews and inner sleuthing) we feel sorry for her, just a little.
In this one, I had some swirling thoughts about Matron and her cool, detached sensibility and so I wasn’t surprised that she was guilty of something. Just not of everything. Her lap-dog relationship with Brumfett was just weird. They seemed so opposite that it had to be some form of obligation that bound them. That was the hinge. A lot of other suspects to consider. I couldn’t decide which of the sisters though, they were all pretty much equally repugnant, especially Rolfe and Brumfett. Witches the pair of them. And that surgeon, Courtney-Briggs. Ugh. He was pretty repellent. Oh and what’s with everyone having snotty and disparaging things to say about the police? Can’t anyone be helpful and understand how important the job is to the whole justice system? Can’t anyone be reasonable? And if you can’t how about keeping to yourself, huh? What a bunch of assholes, really.
James’s writing is sort of old-fashioned, but it’s pretty soothing overall. She uses description sparingly when it comes to locale, but is so specific with her characterizations that nothing is left to your imagination. I think she wants you to be working on filling in the blanks of the mystery, not the suspects. Another thing I like about James’s writing is that she makes me use my dictionary. Not many writers do and I like it. Little-known gems like pavane (n. a stately dance done in elegant clothing) and antiphonal (adj. sung or recited alternately by two groups). MS Word sees pavane as misspelling of pagan or paving. Anyone who can do that is worth reading.
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