The Murder Room (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series #12) (Paperback)

by P. D. James (Author)
Key Phrases: fire investigation, mysterious motorist, third victim, The First Victim, Caroline Dupayne, Benton Smith (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Neither the mystery nor the detective present James's followers with anything truly new in her latest Adam Dalgliesh novel (after 2001's Death in Holy Orders), which opens, like other recent books in the series, with an extended portrayal of an aging institution whose survival is threatened by one person, who rapidly becomes the focus of resentment and hostility. Neville Dupayne, a trustee of the Dupayne Museum, a small, private institution devoted to England between the world wars, plans to veto its continuing operation. After many pages of background on the museum's employees, volunteers and others who would be affected by the trustee's unpopular decision, Neville meets his end in a manner paralleling a notorious historical murder exhibited in the museum's "Murder Room." MI5's interest in one of the people connected with the crime leads to Commander Dalgleish and his team taking on the case. While a romance develops between the commander, who's even more understated than usual, and Emma Lavenham, introduced in Death in Holy Orders, this subplot has minimal impact. A second murder raises the ante, but the whodunit aspect falls short of James's best work. Hopefully, this is an isolated lapse for an author who excels at characterization and basic human psychology.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
After 16 novels, James is still able to find insular communities of professionals in which to set her crimes. This time it's the staff of a quirky museum devoted to England between the wars. The piece de resistance of the museum's collection is the Murder Room, in which are gathered artifacts from famous homicides that took place during the interwar years. Naturally, the room plays a crucial role, both as setting and as backstory, when real-life murder comes to the museum. It starts not in the Murder Room but in a garage, where one member of the family-owned museum is incinerated after being doused with petrol. That the victim was lobbying to sell the museum, over the objections of his sister and brother, only adds fuel to a fire that Scotland Yard Commander Adam Dalgleish is asked to extinguish. As always, James delves deeply into the psyches of her characters--in this case, the museum's staff--uncovering not just motives and secrets, the stuff of any crime plot, but also the flesh and bone of personality. Her novels follow a formula in terms of the action and the setting, but her people rise above that pattern, their complexity giving muscle and sinew to the bare skeleton of the classical detective story. And none so much as Dalgleish himself, who now must contend with tremors of "precarious joy" as his feelings for Emma, a Cambridge professor he met in Holy Orders (2001), force a life-changing decision. James, at 83, has mastered the trick of repeating herself in ever-fascinating new ways. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (November 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400076099
• ISBN-13: 978-1400076093
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11,204 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 12 in The Adam Dalgliesh (Books) Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dame James is back!, November 29, 2003

By	Billy J. Hobbs "billhobbs" (Tyler, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Murder Room (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series #12) (Hardcover)

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. ([e-mail])

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not her best book....., January 24, 2004

By	Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Murder Room (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series #12) (Hardcover)

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.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars When in doubt, return to Dalgleish!, May 2, 2005

By	Laurie Fletcher "Laurie Fletcher" (Casper, Wyoming, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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!