Cover Her Face (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries, No. 1) [Paperback]

P.D. James (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

Headstrong and beautiful, the young housemaid Sally Jupp is put rudely in her place, strangled in her bed behind a bolted door. Coolly brilliant policeman Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard must find her killer among a houseful of suspects, most of whom had very good reason to wish her ill.

Cover Her Face is P. D. James's electric debut novel, an ingeniously plotted mystery that immediately placed her among the masters of suspense.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The finest English crime novelist of her generation.” -- The Globe and Mail

“The reigning mistress of murder...Her vivid, compelling whodunits have made James one of the world’s leading crime writers and a worthy successor to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.” -- Time --This text refers to the Unbound edition.

From the Inside Flap

Sally Jupp was a sly and sensuous young woman who used her body and her brains to make her way up the social ladder. Now she lies across her bed with dark bruises from a strangler?s fingers forever marring her lily-white throat.

Someone has decided that the wages of sin should be death...And it is up to Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh to find out who that someone is. --This text refers to the Unbound edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743219570
• ISBN-13: 978-0743219570
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > British Detectives

More About the Author

P. D. James is the author of twenty previous books, most of which have been filmed and broadcast on television in the United States and other countries. She spent thirty years in various departments of the British Civil Service, including the Police and Criminal Law Departments of Great Britain's Home Office. She has served as a magistrate and as a governor of the BBC. In 2000 she celebrated her eightieth birthday and published her autobiography, Time to Be in Earnest. The recipient of many prizes and honors, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991 and was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame in 2008. She lives in London and Oxford.

Photo credit Ulla Montan

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Impressive Debut That Will Interest Established Fans, May 23, 2003

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cover Her Face (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries, No. 1) (Paperback)

Sally Jupp is unexpectedly attractive--and an unwed mother in an era when such still carries considerable stigma. After a sterling record at a home for "fallen women," she finds work as a maid for the aristocratic but somewhat impoverished Maxie family, and once installed shows another aspect of her personality: a perverse pleasure in creating unpleasantness for virtually every one who crosses her path. The Maxie family is largely impervious to her machinations... but when Sally goes so far as to tantalize a proposal of marriage from the Maxie son, her game of troubling the water turns lethal, and Scotland Yard's Inspector Dalgliesh is on the job.

This 1962 effort was P.D. James' first novel, and at the time it drew enough praise to immediately place among the foremost mystery writers of the day. And indeed there is much to be said for it: the story is well-constructed, the characters well drawn, and the crime is appropriately mysterious; on the whole it is a fast and fun read. But not all P.D. James fans will be impressed. Although there is more than a hint of the distinctive style and convolutions James will bring to her later work, it borrows a great deal in construction from Agatha Christie and not a little from Dorothy Sayers in terms of literary style, and Inspector Dalgliesh is not as well developed here as he will eventually become.

On the whole, I recommend the novel--but I recommend it to established fans of P.D. James, who will be interested to see her working in the "classic English murder mystery" style and enjoy comparing this debut work to the author's later and more impressive work. First timers would do better to select one of the many novels that find James at the peak of her form--with DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS or A TASTE FOR DEATH particularly recommended.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uncover this book!, May 2, 2005

By 

Laurie Fletcher "Laurie Fletcher" (Casper, Wyoming, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cover Her Face (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries, No. 1) (Paperback)

This is P.D. James' first published book and our first introduction to Inspector Dalgleish. It is easy to see why this book was considered a bold entry into a tough field of really terrific British crime fiction. One of the hallmarks of the writing of P.D. James is her insistence on describing every scene in excruciating detail, but then again, those details enable her to build the story to a conclusion that surprises, but we should have seen all along. This is a fairly unusual story about the murder of an enigmatic housemaid and about the depths of people we assume we know ...and it plays out nicely. Although it was written in 1962, it has a definite timeless quality to it, like so many of the books by P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. For all of their detailed narrative, they never seem to mire you in a period of time unless it is intentional and noteworthy.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good mystery, October 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Cover Her Face (Paperback)

P.D. James' first mystery. Of all her books, this is the one that adheres most closely to the conventions of the Golden Age mysteries of the 1920s, complete with an English country house, a locked-room murder, and a final confrontation between all the suspects and the detective (Adam Dalgliesh) at the very end. Such theatrical, Christie-esque devices are certainly entertaining, though this isn't exactly serious literature, which James usually writes. Dalgliesh isn't quite fully developed yet; nor are many of the other characters. Nevertheless, this is a satisfying mystery and a remarkable debut for one of the world's finest authors.