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 Going way off the boil. October 4, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
From the crass character set-up over lunch at the Ivy to the very unsatisfactory ending with a confusing subplot, this book did not hold my attention at all. Is it really from the author of 'Devices and Desires' and 'Original Sin'? Can this be the work of the author of 'The Lighthouse?' It reads like a (bad) parody of Agatha Christie. A great disappointment.
 P.D. James - The Private Patient September 23, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I received proofs of the this, the new P.D. James, and the new Barbara Vine The Birthday Present, within days of one another, and decided it would be fun to read the two new novels by the two leading females of the British crime genre back-to-back, and seeing which I preferred. The answer, I'm afraid, is that I preferred neither. Both are disappointing efforts in their own way: the writing of both is exceptional, but both fall down at the hurdle of being a satisfying crime novel. As for the Vine, the only thing shocking about the new novel from a writer normally relied on for her shocks, is that there are none! And as for this P.D. James, she can normally be relied upon to provide a satisfying and surprising solution to her richly detailed mysteries, but here she just doesn't bother. She takes the obvious, what she's rather been suggesting all along (which, of course, one suspects cannot possibly be the real solution: she surely has a lovely trick up her sleeve for us), and runs with it.
That is the largest problem with The Private Patient. There are others. A good example is the almost messianic way she treats Dalgliesh (especially in reference to one silly weepy scene with subordinate Miskin), which is completely ridiculous almost from the start. Her characters just do not come across as real people when she starts giving them such devotions. I am always prepared to suspend a little belief with James (whose plummy characters have always come from the 60's unless they are lower on the class ladder, in which case they are generally hard-working, sloppy-talking stalwarts), but things here get a little silly: the characters talk with an eloquence not even found in some Booker novels, and their speech exhibits a clarity of thought that real human beings just do not spontaneously have, in my experience. Another criticism, which stems from the same root as the previous problem, is her silly political asides. A recent interview in some British newspaper revealed James to have some rather... disappointing, beliefs, and she takes the time to air them here occasionally, in brief splutters of wrinkly condescension. It's not exactly a massive problem, but it's just not necessary, adds nothing to the story, and just kept jerking me out of the story. Which, in all other respects, was absolutely, completely engaging and embroiling. The only other disappointing aspect was the fact that Rhoda Gradwyn seemed such an intensely interesting character, but I didn't really felt like we got under her skin at all, which was a shame. She remained a little too much of an enigma, when she was clearly the most interesting character in the book (I remember a similar problem cropping up in The Lighthouse, in fact.)
It says something that even though there were (and are) things about James' writing that I find intensely annoying, I loved the experience of reading The Private Patient. And the reason is that James' writing is simply superb. Intense detail illuminates rather than bores, and helps make the novels setting a constantly atmospheric one. The richness of the whole thing is something I was delighted to immerse myself in every time I picked the book up again. She (like Rendell as Vine) writes like no other crime writer, takes a sumptuous care over the business like no peer of hers seems to do. Everything is detailed, everything is fully realised. She constructs the starting points for her plots with a kind of love: the confluence of events, the things which bring these eclectic people to this isolated setting, this macrocosm of a locked-room mystery, be it set in a lighthouse, private clinic, nursing college or religious retreat. Her build-ups are always fascinating, how she brings everything together, sets up the suspects, motives, relationships, histories. In fact, they're almost my favourite part of the P.D. James experience!
So, my disappointments aside, I mostly enjoyed the experience, and so probably will all James fans. The solution is a damp affair, but the rest is not. It's a good James novel, just not a great one. Which is a much better state of affairs than none at all.
Not a detective story September 19, 2008
3 out of 13 found this review helpful
Rather than follow the long-honored tradition in detective novels of providing a tight conclusion which explains all the mysteries, this book explicitly tells the reader "there was an arrogance in wanting always to know the truth". Most appalling. I will not read another P.D. James.
An Unusually Upbeat Ending September 19, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This latest Adam Dalgliesh mystery is up to P.D. James' usual standard. Once again there is a world filled with unhappy people from dysfunctional families. But some of those involved do live lives less bleak than often portrayed in her books, and the ending (more of an epilogue, placed half a year after the events in the rest of the book) is actually filled with a whole series of relatively happy couples.
The first murder victim is a freelance investigative journalist, and what bothers me a little is the depiction of her profession. First of all, I don't know if there are that many investigative reporters working freelance. But more important is the image of investigative journalism. To me this conjures up memories of Watergate, and hardworking reporters exposing polluting companies, corrupt politicians, and similar scandals. To the people in this book, in the world that P.D. James portrays, investigative journalists dig up dirt on little people, ruining their lives, just so they can earn a lot of money.
When you watch British mystery shows, the journalists are usually a flock of nuisances, irritating everyone else as they get in the way and ask less than helpful questions. So in this P.D. James seems to be faithful to a British media tradition. But I don't think it reflects the real world at all.
Other than that minor niggle, this is a very good read.
 Too many political rants, too little detection September 18, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
At the grand age of 88, 46 years after her debut with 'Cover Her Face', it seems P D James has written her last mystery featuring Adam Dalgliesh. 'The Private Patient', the 14th novel in the series, is heavy with a sense of finality from the outset. The Special Investigation Squad is about to be disbanded, Inspector Kate Miskin is awaiting promotion and Dalgliesh himself, preparing to marry his fiancee Emma, is considering retirement. Without giving anything away, the epilogue settles all the regular characters' fates in such a conclusive way, it strongly suggests the author has no intention of revisiting them. I shall certainly be sorry to see the series end, but on the evidence of this book I think the time is probably right.
'The Private Patient' has much to enjoy and admire in it. P D James arguably writes the best prose in the crime genre; here, as usual, the writing is intelligent, evocative, sometimes even beautiful. She is also exceptionally good at describing locations and capturing their atmospheres - the lonely manor house which is the focus of this investigation and the nearby circle of prehistoric stones complete with a grisly supernatural legend are especially memorable. She also hasn't lost her ability to unnerve the reader; the first murder in this book, with the howling wind outside and the murderer dressed in a surgical gown and mask, certainly raised the hairs on the back of my neck (and brought to mind a similarly sinister scene in the old British thriller 'Green For Danger').
Unfortunately, in other ways the book is not up to the author's usual standard. The mystery itself and its eventual solution are unsatisfactory and never quite convincing. There's a fair amount of repetition too, particularly when it comes to the private lives of the secondary characters, with some paragraphs about Kate and DS Benton-Smith lifted almost verbatim from James's previous novel 'The Lighthouse'. Most puzzling of all, there's a subplot introduced towards the end of the book about Emma's friends Clara and Annie which is totally unnecessary and as a result rather distasteful. It serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to bring the pace of the plot to a grinding halt for a few pages. It's almost as if this was intended to be part of the story but then James lost interest. It's both surprising and disappointing coming from an author whose plots are usually so meticulously planned and executed.
Another problem for me, which has been getting steadily worse over the last few Dalgliesh novels, is James's insistence on shoehorning her political views into the narrative. I fully accept that I could be accused of bias because I happen to disagree strongly with her on just about every subject, but it's definitely more than that. Many other crime writers do it, I know, and that's absolutely fine, as long as it's kept within the context of the story. What annoys me about the way it's done here is the crassness and clumsiness with which these views are dropped into the book. Characters suddenly break into an unnatural flood of right-wing rhetoric without any warning and with no obvious connection to events around them; if you must put Tory propaganda in your novel, at least do it with a little subtlety. And I really have to complain about the ignorance of some of the views expressed; I can only imagine P D James does her research browsing through past Daily Mail editorials. One particular comment, stating that 90% of comprehensive school pupils speak no English, is so breathtakingly stupid that I almost threw the book away in disgust. I fear Baroness James has been spending too much time hobnobbing with her fellow Tory peers; like them, she clearly has no idea what is going on in the world outside her own smug, narrow upper-middle-class bubble.
Don't get me wrong, there is still enjoyment to be had from this book, but it is undoubtedly a long way from her best work. If this really is the final Dalgliesh novel, it's a great pity the series couldn't have ended on a higher note.
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