Well this series definitely intrigues me. I ended up reading a short story starring this character last year or the year before for Festive Tasks and then I ended up trying to start a stand alone with him and didn't realize it wasn't the first book. So I put it away and forget about reading this series until now. I have to say that P.D. James does a great job with all of the characters that are introduced, but the book starts off very slowly. It reminds me of some of Agatha Christie works, especially with a main character (Adam Dalgliesh) rounding up all of the suspects and explaining everything and revealing the murderer. I do like books that take place after World War II. You get to see an England that is still unsure of what direction it will go. We have some prejudices here that leak out when anyone discusses the murder victim.

"Cover Her Face" is the first book introducing Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard. The book starts off though following the Maxie family, their friends, and servants. The matriarch of the family hires a young unmarried single mother named Sally Jupp to help with Mrs. Maxie's bedridden husband. Some of the family members get a glimpse here and there of Sally's true nature (she seems sly and also full of malice towards Mrs. Maxie's daughter Deborah and seems to be flirting or something else with her son, Stephen). After the local fete though, Sally announces that Stephen Maxie has proposed to her. The following morning when they are unable to waken her, and realizing that the bedroom door is barred, Stephen and a friend of Deborah, Felix, climb through a window and find that Sally has been strangled. Then enters Dalgliesh who methodically questions every member of the household and then even the local doctor, vicar, and the previous employers and family members of Sally. 

I thought that Dalgliesh at times was a bit too cold. We are given bare bone facts about him, but I wanted more. The Maxie family and their friends were interesting. We get some details on their loyal servant Martha, a woman who believes she has an understanding with Stephen Maxie, Catherine Bowers. And a man who hopes to marry Deborah, Felix Hearne.

I think we jumped around a bit too much to get a handle on everyone. We are given glimpses of people here and there, but there are too many things left dangling for me as a reader. For example, there is enough said about Stephen Maxie that I wonder if he is being portrayed as asexual or not. Another example is the character of Felix, we find out that is on edge being around any type of police, but I wouldn't consider the Gestapo and Scotland Yard along the same lines. So there were just things like that which confused me a bit while reading.   

The flow of the book takes a long while to get going. I think that James wanted to make sure she set the scene, but it takes it a long while to get going and I was confused about who was who at first.

The setting of a post War World II England (this takes place in the 1960s) was interesting. You definitely get a sense that the Maxie and others see themselves as higher class based on previous riches the family experienced. However, you can see that the family is barely supporting itself and you have some characters slamming death duties.

The ending leaves a surprising romantic opening for Dalgliesh. 

Wow great first book in this series and loved the plot and reveal of the victim and the murderer. 

Going to knock this out today since it's only 250 pages. I took tomorrow off so looking forward to catching up with books and reviews!

“The cultured cop! I thought they were peculiar to detective novels.”

In “Cover Her Face” by P. D. James


Sometimes people just like to talk about the books they're reading. Not boast. Just talk. I realise such plebeian behaviour may not be acceptable in the rarefied circles some people move in, but for the rest of us mere mortals it happens quite a lot. Given that reading is becoming less and less common, one would think you'd be happy people are reading at all, without feeling the need to bitch about the fact that they happened to have enjoyed something so much they might want to read it again. Unless you think reading should just be restricted to the real intelligentsia, among whom some people obviously count themselves. So, unless those people have evidence that re-reading causes cancer or blows up the WC, why not back off and let the rest of us do what we like. Or better, why not direct that scathing anger at something that really matters? "Oh, I'm re-reading ‘Cover Her Face’.” Yes, there are people who like to brag about re-reading the Shakespeare plays, but most of us are just trying to be accurate. If you say, "I'm reading such-and-such," people assume you mean "reading for the first time.

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

We've already discussed the Magical Realism and Supernatural categories, so today we're going to talk about locked room mysteries. Tomorrow OBP will be posting about the general mystery genre, so keep an eye out for that post as well!

Locked room mysteries are one of our narrower categories for this bingo. A locked room mystery is basically defined as an "impossible" crime - made impossible by the fact that the location where the body was found - or the crime occurred - precludes all possible solutions. According to wikipedia:

"The crime in question typically involves a crime scene with no indication as to how the intruder could have entered or left, i.e., a locked room. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax."

For purposes of bingo, any "impossible" crime will do. Here are our picks:

Obsidian Black Death

Big grin. I love locked room mysteries.

In fact one of my favorite books that I always go around telling everyone about is a locked room mystery (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd). I always think these are fun if you manage to get a really good story along with you what seems to be an impossible to solve mystery.
I love it even more if the author includes a map or drawings in order for you the reader to figure it out as you go along too. Agatha Christie did this in a lot of her works, but I can't think of any other author out there that did this in older works or in contemporary books today.

Here are some locked room mysteries that you can all take a closer look at:

1. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

2. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

3. The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr (this is the book I am going to read for the square since I have read the other two previously).

Moonlight Murder:

I also love locked room mysteries, even though I can rarely figure them out! Here are three that I've enjoyed in the past, and the one that I plan to read for the game!

1. Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie: this is one of my favorites by Dame Agatha. It is set in the Middle East at an archeological dig, and while Poirot makes an appearance, it is narrated by a young nurse by the name of Amy Leatheran.

2. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins: this may be the first appearance of the locked room mystery in fiction, having been published in 1868. Collins was a contemporary of Dickens and wrote novels which were categorized as "sensation novels." The Moonstone has the distinction of being the first identified "detective novel." It's quite well done, even if the solution is sort of silly.

3. Cover Her Face by P.D. James: This is the first of the Adam Dalgliesh mysteries, and it is a classic locked room mystery. It has been years since I read it, but I recall really enjoying it. I went on to read most of the Adam Dalgliesh books published through the 1990's, although I haven't read them all.

I am planning to read The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux, which was one of the earliest examples of a locked room mystery, and was published in 1907. Open Road Publishers have a kindle edition available for only .99 on amazon. I find that their editions are far superior to the ones that are scraped from the public domain, because they have awesome things like formatting, and proofreading.

Other posts in this series:

OB & MR talk magical realism

OB & MR talk supernatural