Viewers of PBS may still be thinking about the series “Dalgliesh,” which has
been running now for several seasons. It stars Bertie Carvel as the eponymous
detective Adam Dalgliesh, a creation of the renowned British author P. D.
James. James died in 2014, leaving behind 14 novels featuring Dalgliesh and
several other notable works, including the novel Children of Men, which was made into a brilliant and incisive film by Alfonso Cuaron in 2006.
There are many ways to start the works of PD James, and there’s certainly a lot
to be said for just starting at the beginning with “Cover Her Face,” written in
1962, and working through the novels chronologically. But if you just want to dip a toe into the world that PD James created, I’d suggest looking at Death in Holy Orders, written in 2001. It’s probably my favorite of all the Dalgleish novels.
Death in Holy Orders begins with a story within a story, a narrative written by the witness of the first murder that propels the novel forward. I love this technique, which gets us into the novel in a, well, novel way. The narrative also creates a direct, first-person voice that enumerates all the other tragedies that the narrator has suffered in her life. At her best, PD James writes about murder and its consequences in a way that is not sensational nor purely morbid, but that shows how nearly everyone you might meet in the regular course of a day has suffered some kind of great tragedy. Often her characters are drawn together by the solidarity created in the space of their grief, the common humanity that they all possess just by being human.
But James is a mystery writer, and she unfolds this particular mystery with a
pacing that is at turns patient and shocking. I love this about James’s fiction.
She seems to intuitively know just how much exposition to give, just how much
explanation to share, before something unexpected happens. Again, I’m drawn
to her fiction because this is really how life itself works; she ends up writing
mystery novels that are larger commentaries on the presence of expectation,
tragedy, and healing in our own lives.
James also creates landscapes so well, and this novel in particular evokes the
eastern coast of England in a beautiful and terrifying way. The sand of the
beach becomes the covering of the first body found in the novel, showing how
the landscape itself is susceptible to the corruptions of the human heart.But James’s characters also find peace in the contrast between the terrible
events they witness and the sheer beauty of the landscape in which those
events occur.
Finally, I love this particular James novel because it evokes memory and place
together. Dalgliesh has a history with the theological college at which the
murder takes place, and as James writes about him coming back to a place that
had meant a great deal to him in childhood, she shows the sense of wonder and
confusion and mystery that all of us have felt upon returning to a childhood spot. Were things really that small then? Were the shadows on the wall really that terrifying? And why is everything so much dimmer, darker, and decayed than I remember it?
James’s epilogue to this novel quotes Henry James—that the purpose of a novel is “to help the human heart to know itself.” I’ve found this novel in particular to demonstrate that truth for me, and I hope it does for you, too.
