Customer Reviews

The Murder Room (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series #12)

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Any P.D. James is preferable to no P.D. James and while some readers may have found "The Murder Room" faint in some areas, Dame James' latest Adam Dalgleish is, well, Adam Dalgleish. How can a reader go wrong?

Granted, James has given us a new twist (Adam is in love and her traditional police procedural takes a different turn. But before one cries "soap opera," "The Murder Room" is not about Adam Dalgliesh's personal life. It is about a series of murder, a plot outline with which James is quite comfortable and her legions of fans come to expect.

Circumstances surround the undertakings (forgive the pun) of the Dupayne Museum,, a small, rather esoteric, museum devoted to the "interwar years," the period in England from 1919 to 1939. However, the rub is that the lease on the museum is about to expire and the three trustees (siblings) must agree totally on its extension or else the museum cannot continue. One brother, Dr. Neville Dupayne, is dead set (forgive the pun again) against signing; thus the demise of the museum is at hand, it appears. Quickly into the book, the good doctor is found burned alive in very suspicious circumstances and just about everyone has a motive for seeing him dead. Commander Dalgleish and his team from New Scotland Yard are called in and before this death can be solved, two others follow, all with connections to the museum.

James clearly is in charge of this narrative and, as always, controls the pace and the revelations of the investigation. Dalgleish is, as always, superb. The resolution comes not through histrionics or melodrama, but the James/Dalgleish penchant for brilliance.

Is this James' best? Hmmmm. "The best" is probably the individual reader's personal choice, as I've yet to read a "bad" James, or even a "poor" one. "The Murder Room" joins the other dozen or so Dalglieshes comfortably. It is an excellent read. (Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)

I hate to give any book by P.D.James less than five stars, but as mysteries go THE MURDER ROOM is not one of her better books. She gets four stars from me because even on her worst days James is better than most of her fellow mystery writers.

James strength lies in her character development, and as ususal, in THE MURDER ROOM she has done a wonderful job of getting into the heads of the principle players and sharing their "secrets" with the reader. James also has a great talent for setting the stage and if you like being transported to England via armchair you should know that no one does it better--probably why the dramatized versions of her books are so well done.

However, plot development has never been James strong suit. She often has difficulty linking the murderer's personality with the motive to kill. Her characters seem like ordinary human beings, but sooner or later one of them does something horrendous which seems all out of character and "overkill" for someone who could probably figure out a better way to get on. Maybe that's the nature of murder--stupid.

However, for James, it's almost as though having created a fully rounded character she has difficulty connecting her creation with the act of committing murder. Sometimes she pulls it off, other times not. When she fails, the end is often frenetic and stretches the imagination beyond the breaking point.

I will always read James' tales because I appreciate her philosophical insights acquired over a long life lived in interesting times.

I bought the hardcover version of this book, but I am recommending to friends that they buy a used book (if they don't borrow mine), check the book out of the library, or wait for the soft cover. The price is too steep for the contents within.

The latest installment in the Adam Dalgliesh series, "The Murder Room" is classic P.D. James. As some previous reviews have correctly pointed out, there is nothing new in this book. As a reader, the appeal of P.D. James is not the search for something new, but rather the confidence of a high quality, well written mystery.

"The Murder Room" is set in a privately held, small, family museum that focuses on the interware years of 1919-39. The title refers to one room in the museum that features infamous murders from this time period. As always, P.D. James fills the book with interesting and complex characters--two dysfunctional families, loyal caretakers, mis-guided youths, and of course, New Scotland Yard. Sex, intrigue, loyalty, and of course, money, create alliances between some characters while pitting others against one another.

Although the reader knows the murderer is likely to be closely connected to the museum, P.D. James leaves the reader guessing until quite close to the end. The detailed character development, and the way the words lead the reader to envision the atmosphere of this country museum will keep you entranced until the end.

I have long felt that P.D.James was the heir to Dorothy L. Sayers in constructing the intellectual murder mystery. Her characters and plots, revealed in her uncompromising formal use of the language, has set her apart from most of her contemporaries. Murder Room, however, reads as though it was written by committee. The plot and central characters are unquestionably James' but the setting and early character developments read as though they were assigned to a college literature class then edited by the author. The first one hundred pages are laden with contrived metaphors that distract from the flow of the story. It is as though Ms. James tried to expand a concise l50 page story into a 300+ page novel by adding minutia to every discriptive developmental scene. Even the avid followers of Adam Dalgliesh have difficulty recognizing their hero in this book. One understands that he is in love but he seems to stumble onto the solution of this mystery instead of painstakingly putting together disparate pieces that lead to a discovery. His personality is altered just enough so that long time readers detect a difference. Having written this, however, I concede that the conclusion (to the mystery not the book)is definately P.D.James. She puts the pieces together in ways that are both rational and revealing (though predictable)and then sends Dalgliesh in uncharacteristic emotional turmoil to thrust a letter into the hands of his lady and then stand mutely aside to await her acceptance or rejection. James could have written the ending either way and remained consistent with what we have learned over the years about Adam Dalgliesh.

P.D. James doesn't write cutting edge thrillers like she used to (she's in her mid-80s for heaven's sake...even Agatha Christie got tired eventually), but she still has her grip firmly on the heart and mind of the inimitable, desirable Commander Dalgleish. The crimes in question take place relative to the "Murder Room" at an obscure little museum on the outskirts of London. I wasn't transported by the story, which involves murders staged to resemble those in the Murder Room, but I sure did like a chance to be in and around the mind of Dalgleish the Poet once again. I loved dear old Tally, the solitary caretaker, and wished with all my heart that someone would pay attention to her. Alas, this is not a dynamic book, but it is a good, fairly quick read for a nice weekend afternoon. And Lady James sure seems to know a lot about naughty things for a nice old grandmother!

For fans of P.D. James' intricately developed mystery novels featuring her protagonist Scotland Yard Commander and part-time poet, Adam Dalgliesh, "The Murder Room" will most certainly feel like familiar territory. It doesn't set any new standards, but it tells its story well, if not remarkably. People looking to try out P.D. James for the first time might do better to start with another of her works, quite possibly "Death In Holy Orders" or "A Taste For Death".

"The Murder Room" begins with Dalgliesh immersed in thoughts of trying to balance his busy work schedule with a relatively new romance in his life with Cambridge professor Emma Lavenham. His thoughts are soon interrupted when he happens across an old friend who is doing research at the Dupayne Museum, an aging structure at the edge of Hampstead Heath, which devotes its entire inventory to the British inter-war years of 1919 - 1938. There is one room in the museum, the Murder Room, which houses archival photos and some artifacts which relate to some of the grisly crimes commited within that era. Dalgliesh and his friend visit the Dupayne and, a week later, one of the three siblings who runs the museum is found burned to death in his car. Thus begins the murder inquiry, headed up by our estimable Dalgliesh and his underlings Kate Miskin, Piers Tarrant, and newcomer Benton-Smith.

P.D. James writes two kinds of murder mysteries. One starts off with the murder right away. The other waits for about 100 pages, arranging up the plot, the characters, the setting, and the motives. "The Murder Room" falls into the latter category. The author is great at developing the details of her characters' lives, and makes no exception in this novel. All of the main players are carefully drawn, and often times sympathetic. I truly felt bad for the first murder victim. James's description of place, one of her strongest talents, also does not fail here. You get a wonderful vision of the Dupayne Museum, of the cottage of Tally Clutton, the museum's cleaner, and of Cambridge in the autumn.

There are some things that count against the book, unfortunately. I didn't mind the first murder coming after page 100, but so much of what came before seemed so obviously to be set-up, that it became a tad distracting at times. Many of the characters in the novel, more so than in James's previous works, come across as rather depressed or, conversely, trite. It made for a bit of a downer. Dalgliesh's right-hand-woman, Kate Miskin, who in previous novels seemed to be growing and becoming happier as a person, is in this book sliding back into some rather blunt eruptions of bitterness. I found this disappointing. Dalgliesh's other main helper, Piers Tarrant, has angry outbursts in every other chapter. Most disconcerting. Also, the book consists of quite a few red herrings, which is not typically James's style. If what she typically presents in other stories does not directly relate to the murder itself, it will usually provide some sort of meaning to the other characters and plotlines involved. That was not so much the case here.

"The Murder Room", despite its flaws, is still a good novel. I went through it relatively quickly, and enjoyed the read, despite some of the oppressively darker aspects. P.D. James is a superb novelist and, at 83, she proves that she has lost none of her masterful literary capability. The prose is excellent. The plot is adequate. It is only a standard entry in James's long and illustrious writing career, but it is head & shoulders above many of the modern mystery novels out there today, so it most definitely recommended to fans of the genre.

There is no better murder mystery writer than P D James. She is without doubt the absolute best and the reigning queen in her given genre. There isn't a single James book I haven't read and not enjoyed. "The Murder Room (MR)" is no exception....so if I seem unduly critical of her latest, it's only because I've grown accustomed to her usual high standards and can't help but judge its merits against her very best works.

Adam Dagliesh as romantic hero in MR may be poignant only to James' fans. Newcomers are likely to find Dagliesh's new guise oddly irrelevant. Colleague Inspector Kate Miskin shows her slightly bitter and cryptic side and though it's not always a pretty sight, it's a contemporary reminder that the effects of the English class system haven't completely worn off. The characters that populate MR are typically Jamesian, hard, cynical, and ruthless and there's none more unpleasant than Caroline Dupayne, one of the three trustees of the Dupayne Museum, whose fate depends on whether the trustees agree to carry on. That woman chills your blood and wilts your soul. There are also the usual damaged people who make excellent suspects (eg, Tally, Muriel), so once you've met them, you know you're in familiar territory.

MR doesn't offer anything new but at 83, James shouldn't be expected to deliver anything groundbreaking. Though I enjoyed the book immensely - her writing is never less than sharp and exquisite - the plotting, I felt, was a little weak and ultimately unconvincing from the second murder onwards. There are too many red herrings in there, suggesting a lack of cogency in plot development. The identity of the murderer, when it is revealed, doesn't surprise though the motive isn't remotely commensurate with the violence and viciousness of the crime.

Enough with the negative comments. There's always integrity and quality in James' work as she is never less than erudite in her research. Despite the above criticisms, MR still makes a rivetting read and you can do a lot worse than picking up a copy and finding out for yourself.

A complex crime involving scheming people of various classes who are not necessarily what they seem. That's the hallmark of a P.D. James novel and exactly what she serves up here. I loved the setting: a museum devoted to the Inter-War years that features a Murder Room chronicling the most heinous crimes of that period. A copycat killer seems to be on the loose, slaying two people in one night and then going after a third. Now in her eighties, James is in fine form, her writing as tight and deep as ever. This feels like her intended end for the Adam Dalgleish series since she gives him a happy fiancée at the close.

This is not only the latest P.D. James book, it is also her best work in some time. She has gone back to the core of her work, to murder and to Adam Dalgiesh, the Commander. He is still at Scotland Yard and the book is still about people that come into contact with a murder and how it affects them. In contrast to several other very good writers writing today about their continuing characters, Adam Dalgiesh shows no sign of becoming a private eye, and this is a very good thing for us.

I think that what I really like about P.D James is her gift for expressing apparently intuitively an insight into the core her characters. She knows what makes these individuals run. They each react to the intrusion of a full scale police investigation in a believable fashion. These individual reactions of each of her characters are different, but they are so incredibly nuanced that they are seemingly real. It is as close as you can get to a fictional person. You feel that the author actually knows these characters as people, and what they think and how they feel, each of them. They are not stand ins for the author.

I do not remember if she has been doing this for a while, but there were several words in this book that I admit that I had to mark to look up later. An example of this was the word "etiolated" at page 244. I had never seen the word before and had not an idea what it meant. Merriam-Webster OnLine says it means: "1 : to bleach and alter the natural development of (a green plant) by excluding sunlight; 2 a : to make pale b : to deprive of natural vigor : make feeble." That makes sense and given the context it was clear enough, but there were six or seven of these words that I finally had to look up one after the other - it was fun.

But it is not for the words that I read P.D. James, nor even for the characters, how ever well and completely presented, rather it is for the writing, an example: "He was after all, a poet with a writer's interest in the fabric of other lives." at page 243. That is to me a beautiful sentence, and in context it is close to perfect. It expresses the poetic side of her major character poetically, and talks of the author as well. It is multifaceted. It is elegant. It is prose carried to the edge by an author in full command of her arsenal of words. But the book itself shows an author in full command of her story as well, and that is special too.

P.D. James is by far the best mystery novelist around. Her writing, plot and character development are unsurpassable. This book is no different. It's powerful and suspenseful, and a true psychological thriller. There are a lot of copycats out there, but none can touch Ms. James. In this book Dalgliesh investigates a gruesome murder at a small private museum. This museum is dedicated to displays of art, literature, pop culture, etc. in the years in Britain between the two great wars, and one of the displays is a "murder room" where information is set out about infamous murders that happened during this time in English history. When the first murder occurs, it looks like a copycat from one of the earlier murders. Before Dalgliesh and his team can solve the first murder another body turns up which reinforces the copycat theory. Dalgliesh manages to solve the cases, but not before we see a lot of unexpected complications. James can magically transcend genres and she accomplishes that brilliantly with this novel.