Death in Holy Orders (Om) [Import] [Paperback]

P.D. James (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141008768
• ISBN-13: 978-0141008769
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (134 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,253,084 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In the Characters' Heads ..., May 17, 2001

By 

Leigh Ann Hussey "motogrrl" (SF Bay Area, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Death in Holy Orders (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series #11) (Hardcover)

Nobody gets inside a character's head, lets you see through their eyes, experience their feelings, like P.D. James. You're right there, feeling the same horror a main character feels on discovering a body, understanding completely that feeling of needing to DO something, of bewilderment at seeing something that used to be a person you knew and now is lifeless meat.

So many wonderful details! This too, is one of James' strengths. I really felt right there in an elite seminary on a disintegrating coastline pounded by weather. In fact, the book was so absorbing that I read it straight through, with barely a stop for sleep!

A friend of mine, unfamiliar with James' other works, asked me a question you may also be asking yourself: "Can I start here, or do I need to read the others first?" My answer is, go right ahead and start here. It stands well on its own; recurring characters are introduced gracefully and with just enough backstory to bring a new reader up to speed while not boring a reader already familiar. James is part of the newer generation of British women mystery authors, along with writers like Ngaio Marsh -- more modern-feeling than Christie or Sayers, but if you like Sayers in particular, I think you'll like James.

And if you're already been thru the previous ten AD mysteries? You'll love this one. It's definitely one of the best yet. I'm really really happy I bought it right when it came out, hardcover price notwithstanding.

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A joy to be reunited with Adam Dalglish, May 24, 2001

By 

Laura G. Carter "Castlebreaker" (Reidsville, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Death in Holy Orders (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series #11) (Hardcover)

P. D. James is, without doubt, the greatest living mystery writer today. Bar none. "Death In Holy Orders", her latest Adam Dalglish offering, merely cements this fact - as if it needed it.

The body of a young ordinand is discovered, smothered by a collapse of sand, on the beach near St. Anselem's, a theological college on the lonely shores of East Anglia. Ironically, St. Anselem's was also a particularly important place in Dalglish's boyhood and, when he is called to investigate this shocking murder, his journey there represents in microcosm the disparity between the new England and the old, the former way of living butting heads with the new, a theme carried delicately throughout the book in many ways, including the characters and how they live and think.

Subsequently, two more murders are committed - the last a most gruesome, shocking dispatching taking place in the chapel of all places - and Dalglish calls in Kate Miskin and company to assist him in finding the perpetrator.

A new twist added here is the subtle romantic situation occurring in the background between Dalglish and one of the people staying at the college during the murders. The ending is more satisfying than "A Certain Justice" and I liked the fact that Ms. James alludes to Dalglish's feelings about the end of the matter written about in "Justice". He feels he failed, somehow, and these feelings make finding this latest killer an even more urgent matter - not only to stop him killing again, but to reassure Dalglish that justice does, indeed, come around more often than not.

A wonderful novel from a terrific writer.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars James does it again! Hallelujah!, April 17, 2001

By 

dikybabe "admeyer" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Death in Holy Orders (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series #11) (Hardcover)

Whoever loves artful writing and whodunit entwined will love P. D. James' latest Adam Dalgleish mystery. Wonderfully set on the East Anglian coast midst ever-changing and threatening nature where an holy order of priests and would-be priests/ordinands reside, this mystery unwinds around the suspicious accidental death of a rich man's son. And once the on leave Dalgleish joins the inquiry, murders just keep coming.

There is romantic, even incestuous, human fraility in this four part novel. There are jealousy, animosity, cross purposes, greed, deceit, anger, depression and revenge at work. Each character is skillfully drawn, especially those that are linked with Dalgleish's past and present, and the setting exacts added suspense to a seemingly pastoral setting.

The decline of the Arbuthnot estate's endowed theological seminary is central to the plot. One can guess that each character is linked to that demise in some fashion. And just as in a good Agatha Christie novel, the characters are tied to one another openly and in disguise, and await the skillful unraveling of the poetic and sensitive intellect of Dalgleish and his cohorts Kate, Piers, and Robbins.

Such a pleasure to relax into a well-written tome! James makes Dalgleish a friend of the reader, a character come to life, someone we know and willingly follow into a mystery that needs solving.