Customer Reviews

The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries)

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

PD James fans are in for a treat in this finely crafted murder mystery. The set up is familiar: a murder occurs in a closed community; it looks like an inside job, which means there are only a handful of suspects -- but that doesn't make it easier for AD and his usual team to crack the case.

James gives us great characterization -- the opinions, desires and weaknesses are gradually revealed as the plot proceeds, and no character is superfluous. We learn more about our favorite characters: AD and Emma Lavenham are planning their wedding, Kate Miskin has broken up with Piers and Benton is developing into a more interesting character.

At the same time, James' weaves in a gorgeous portrayal of the Dorset countryside, making it part of the fabric of the storyline. Having lived there for a couple of years, this book perfectly captures the images, sounds and even smells of one of the most beautiful parts of England.

The plotting is intricate with many layers. Even if you guess whodunnit, there are layers upon layers of devices and desires so that at the end, everything has fallen into place, meshing perfectly with the characters and revealing hidden depths.

Without giving the end away, PD James also finishes up several character storylines. If she were never to write another book, the series would have reached a satisfying conclusion with this great work of fiction. A real treat and immensely enjoyable.

This is not P.D. James's finest mystery novel.
That said, even something that is a notch below this wonderful writer's prime still stands head and shoulders above most of what is being produced by the vast majority of her peers. Her writing, her careful attention to detail, her descriptive powers have only improved with age.
So, too, have the deductive skills of Adam Dalgliesh, many decades after he made his first appearance in the novels penned by this doyenne of crime. He remains as intriguing and occasionally enigmatic figure as ever, although James gives us more carefully-judged glimpses into his inner life than I can recall in any previous novel.
In this outing (hopefully not his final one...), Dalgliesh investigates one of his classic conundrums: a murder that could only have been committed by one of a closed circle of suspects. (That backdrop, typical of James's mysteries, enables her to delve deeply into character and motivation, which is what, together with her writing, transforms this from an ordinary whondunnit into a fabulous read.) Rhoda Gradwyn has finally decided, at the age of 47, to have the disfiguring scar on her face removed at the manor house/clinic run by a noted plastic surgeon. The operation is a success -- but the patient dies. It's murder, and Dalgliesh and his team are summoned to find out who had the most compelling motive to want this muck-racking journalist dead.
It is a mark of the strength of James's characters that we feel compassion for everyone from the victim -- hoping to leave behind some of her internal scars along with the visible one on her face -- to the murderer. A second death raises the stakes still further and Dalgliesh -- on the eve of achieving personal happiness -- must battle to ensure that the case is resolved while doing as little damage as possible to the many other damaged individuals who people the world of Cheverell Manor.
I found the identity of the murderer perhaps a little easier to pick up before the final revelations than in James's prior books, and could argue that perhaps the narrative dragged in a handful of places. Still, set against such high-calibre writing -- not a single false note throughout -- those feel like minor quibbles and even voicing them risks making me feel curmudgeonly.
PD James has produced yet another novel that leads the crime fiction genre and, in parts, transcends it. While Ruth Rendell's Wexford novels are wonderful, they are more procedural, and her psychological suspense novels, while excellent, are too extreme for the reader to feel at ease with them in the same way that we do with Dalgliesh and his fellow characters. Each of the latter are human, and it is those human foibles that lead to the crime itself. While solving the crime is the raison d'etre of the book, it is again James's ability to address human nature that ultimately takes center stage.
As always, I finished this book wishing that I hadn't yet read it, so that I'd have the pleasure of discovering it for the first time. My only wish now is that P.D. James becomes a healthy centenarian and continues crafting her works for decades more. I'd love it if Adam Dalgliesh didn't take his well-earned retirement, but if he does, I'm confident that the author can come up with an equally compelling protagonist for another series...

In Cheverell Manor, an exclusive cosmetic surgery clinic on the remote Dorset moors, a patient has been murdered. Not just any patient: Rhoda Gradwyn was an investigative journalist, a purveyor of private secrets and sensational scandals for the "yellow" media. Anyone might have wanted her dead, given the opportunity, but Cheverell Manor is locked and guarded, reducing the suspect list to the odd group of eccentrics who were with her at the time. There are about a dozen of them--doctors, nurses, administrators, staff, and one other patient--and they all have something to hide. Fortunately for the cause of justice (and unfortunately for the killer), Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard has been sent out from London to look into the matter....

Some things just get better with age, and P. D. James's wonderful chronicle of Adam Dalgliesh is one of them. We first met him in 1962's COVER HER FACE, and THE PRIVATE PATIENT is his 14th adventure so far, making this the longest-running current British mystery series. There are indications throughout this story that it may be the last Dalgliesh novel. Let's hope and pray that it isn't. There's no other detective like Adam Dalgliesh, and there's no other mystery writer like the great P. D. James. Highly, highly recommended.

I wish I could give 5 stars to this, probably the last PD James mystery featuring the stalwart yet sensitive Commander Adam Dalgleish. Most of the book was 5 star material, with the winning PD James formula of isolated setting, cast of improbably named suspects, a gruesome murder or two, and meandering setting description with words like "minatory", "gule" and "subvention" cropping up early and often to establish once again the author's literary bona fides. (Emma wears not a jacket, but a jerkin, as we are reminded three times in three pages.) The final 80 pages were however a disappointment, a rushed flurry of events, interviews with newly found characters appended in too-neat resolution. The ending seemed hardly connected to the build-up that preceded it. If a mystery lacks a satisfying conclusion, all the previous story-telling seems futile. Sorry to say, I have seen a loss of momentum in PD James's last several mysteries. She takes pains to keep up with the times, but her unnecessary subplot about lesbians is so painstakingly tolerant, so jarring, so entirely lacking in narrative reality. The effort to be open-minded is always just that - an effort, and the display of faux acceptance self-consciously calls attention to itself because it rings false and extraneous to the story. Poor Dalgleish, as I remember from earlier novels, was always more interesting as a solitary poet/police officer. Since he acquired a continuing romantic interest, the incongruously young Emma Lavenham, he has become too comfortably uxorious. His depth has dissipated. The detective sidekicks, Miskin and Benton, while again politically correct, are never as interesting as was Dalgleish at his philosophical best. Dare I add that the dialogue is simply not believable? Only in a PD James novel do characters speak in such perfectly shaped paragraphs.

It pains me to give anything by the incomparable P.D. James a rating this low, but it's a measure of my disappointment. Other reviewers have mentioned the tedious repetition, the unnecessary PC excursions, the lack of focus and coherence, and, most painful of all, Dalgliesh's descent into bland irrelevance. What was most unsatisfactory, however, was the treatment of the only intriguing character in the book - the victim, who was, after all, the title character. It is as though the author began writing one book, lost interest, and decided to write another book altogether. And while Cyril Hare is one of my all-time favorite British mystery writers, I found the use of one of his books as a plot device to be very awkward.

Unlike some reviewers, though, I have no problem with "Spring," the last section of the novel. In what seems to be an affectionate farewell to Dalgliesh et al., James grants her characters some relief from the gloom she has forced them to inhabit for so many years.

In P. D. James's "The Private Patient," forty-seven year old Rhoda Gradwyn decides to have plastic surgery to remove a disfiguring scar that has marred her face for thirty-four years. Rhoda is a successful investigative journalist who can afford a top physician, George Chandler-Powell. He will perform the operation at the impressive Cheverell Manor in Dorset, where he has a private and very expensive clinic. Rhoda's close friend, Robin Boynton, is a handsome and unfocused dilettante, who is always trying to extract money from her to finance one of his "first-rate investments." He will be staying in a nearby cottage while Rhoda is at the Manor. When Rhoda is murdered, Commander Adam Dalgleish and his Special Investigation Squad are summoned to look into the crime.

There is no shortage of suspects, including Sister Flavia Holland, the head nurse, Helena Cressett, the general administrator, Lettie Frensham, her deputy who is in charge of the office, Sharon Bateman, a young woman who performs odd jobs, and Robin's cousins, Marcus and Candace Westhall. Marcus is a surgical assistant and Candace is a former university teacher who helps out in the office. Also in residence are Dean Bostock and his wife Kimberley, both chefs. Unless an outsider committed the murder, which is unlikely, one of these people took advantage of Rhoda's helplessness to end her life.

The novel begins in a leisurely manner, with James delineating the personality and history of each character and depicting the setting where the main action is to take place. James is at her best in her analysis of dysfunctional families, romantic entanglements, greed, and emotional insecurity, any of which can drive a person to act self-destructively. James gives special attention to Adam Dalgleish, who is eagerly looking forward to his marriage, and to Detective Inspector Kate Miskin who has secretly admired Adam for years but knows that he cannot reciprocate her feelings. With the help of the local police and Detective Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith, Dalgleish and Miskin attempt to untangle a web of deceit that will lead to the identity of the perpetrator.

Although for much of the book James keeps the reader hooked and eager to learn the culprit's identity, the conclusion is disappointingly flat. The detectives' skill hardly comes into play. Although they follow up leads and conduct a host of interviews, Dalgleish and his team turn out to be spectators more than actors in the drama that plays itself out somewhat melodramatically. In addition, there are several subplots that distract from the main story without adding anything valuable.

James touches on the grand themes that have always interested her: Why do people often behave so irrationally? Is there an unshakeable moral code that applies in all circumstances? Are we ever justified in taking the law into our own hands? Unfortunately, the author fails to integrate these threads into a coherent whole and the narrative fizzles out at the end. Sadly, the illustrious career of a great detective may end with a whimper rather than with the grand finale that he so richly deserves.

I found this to be a very aggravating book.

I have faithfully followed Adam Dalgliesh from the beginning, and count P.D. James among the very best of contemporary murder mystery authors. But this possibly final installment disappoints in a big way. it is as though James decided to illustrate the tedium and boredom of actual police detective work by describing it with a tediously boring recounting of a myriad of detail that only slows down the plot development and tasks the reader's patience. I also fault the deadly combination of an illustrious author and a timid editor for letting a 150-page mystery balloon to 350 pages!

To top it all off, the narrative only starts to heat up on page 300 and then moves so rapidly that the climax is unnecessarily foreshortened. In fact, the actual denouement of the murderer is told not in actual time sequence but in a recounted recollection of one of the detectives!

Having unloaded my vitriol, I now also have to acknowledge with appreciation that the final paragraph of the book is the finest final paragraph of a mystery novel I have ever encountered anywhere, from any writer! And coming up against the oeuvre of James's previous work, it is totally unexpected.

Adam Dalgliesh fans will feel wonderfully rewarded by a deep and long look at his work in diligently investigating this case while attempting to balance his life to leave room for his love of Emma Lavenham. You'll end the book wondering about how that balance might change in future books. These thoughts in many ways make for a better mystery than solving the murder.

The Private Patient is more about love, its effects, and the harm it costs to not receive and give it . . . than about crime, detection, or justice. As with The Lighthouse, Baroness James has created deeply etched new characters while turning her on-going characters into ever-more real seeming personalities.

While many novelists are only too quick to paint a victim as harmless or harmful and bump them off, Baroness James gives us a complex portrait of a woman, investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn, whose youth scarred both her face and her psyche. As a result, she uses her slashed face as a mask to hide behind . . . and to keep people away on her own terms. She becomes good at ferreting out the secrets of others and displaying those hidden scars for a large pay day.

With the death of her abusive father and her mother's plan to remarry, Gradwyn realizes she doesn't need the scar any more and seeks one of the most expensive and highly regarded plastic surgeons, George Chandler-Powell, to repair her face. But she decides that there might be stories involved, and her meddling brings forth counter forces that lead to her death.

Strangled in her patient suite, steps from the nurse's bedroom, it begins to appear that an insider is involved. But no one remembers meeting Gradwyn before. What's the motive?

AD is dispatched to work on the case shortly after a call comes from number ten. Why is this case so important?

The murderer wore gloves so forensic clues aren't going to solve this case. Carefully examining opportunity and motive should narrow down the list of suspects. But more events occur faster than AD can untangle the clues he uncovers. As a result, the book is more of a crime story accompanied by a police procedural where the detective trails the killer too slowly rather than a classic mystery in which the brilliant detective solves everything by pulling a rabbit out of the hat.

The story is a gripping one involving lots of memorable characters, sympathetic and unsympathetic motives, and damaged personalities ill equipped to deal with human stress and conflict. To me, the best crime and mystery books are as well developed and interesting as a well-written novel . . . independent of the mystery. By that standard, this is an excellent book.

I found it annoying to have the police investigation be so ineffectual. It made the book seem a bit pointless in a way. I graded the book down one star to express by disappointment in this regard.

You, however, may not mind . . . in which case this will be a clear winner for you.

This is a book that should be savoured for a number of reasons. The first is that P.D. James has lost none of her talent for writing a novel that grips and holds you. Also, the book is more than just a little mystery story. There is a whole lot more here than that. It's a book that held me in its thrall right until the end. Of course we have Adam Dalgliesh, and we have his team (Kate and Benton). We also have an intriguing mystery when a private patient in a country clinic is found dead in her room. Adam and his team travel to Dorset to try to solve the murder. The book is complex and the murder is also. And last, but not least, there is a possibility that this may be the last Adam Dalgliesh book. Ms. James has certainly approached this issue throughout the book. I will be sad if that is so, but it is a wonderful way to end a brilliant creation! Ms. James is a wonderful author, and I truly revelled in this book. I put it down with a real sense of sadness, but I think it is a book that should be read more than once. A second and third reading may be in order in order that all the rich nuances can be grasped. I have to say, that although it is only the middle of October, I think this is the most significant book of fiction that I will read in 2008.

I'm sad to give this three stars because I'm a big P.D. James fan. The story started out promisingly, a murder in a closed community, limited number of suspects who all seem to have a reason to kill. Then it spins out of control into so many directions. Not 'red herrings' but things completely extraneous, such as a subplot relating to Dalgliesh's fiance's friends who are a lesbian couple (which seems like an attempt to be 'modern'). There's also a long, drawn out discussion about what to name the killer (Noctis), then that name is only used once in the rest of the book. Meanwhile, there is very little about the actual victim. It's stated she's a tabloid writer, and one small example is given of the type of thing she writes, but I was really in the dark regarding her. Even Dalgliesh's trip to her agent gave no more information. Just when I thought the book had ended, there were 3 or 4 more extraneous chapters.

This book also assumes that previous Dalgliesh books had been read. A mention at the very end of the book that Dalgliesh is a poet would be leading readers puzzled if they hadn't read previous books. There is also knowledge assumed about Borden, Kate and Piers (who only appears in a text message in one of the extraneous plots).