P D James, Baroness James as she now is, started out in the 60s writing first rate mysteries featuring Adam Dalgliesh. And then they got better until she is now in the summa cum laude category.
It had been a while since I last read her books and the return to the start of the series surprised me. So mature, such skill with characterization, plot, laying of red herrings, swift turns to surprise the reader's expectations. Much as I enjoy many other contemporary mystery writers, she is the doyenne of our day.
This fourth book in the Dalgliesh series is about a nursing school which is located in an over-elaborate but crumbling Victorian pile called Nightingale House. The name has nothing to do with nursing, Florence Nightingale, or the bird. The man who built the house was named Nightingale. But the nurses are called Nightingales by the other medical personnel at the hospital to which the school is attached.
Exposition in a novel is sometimes difficult but in this book James has worked out a clever way to introduce the reader to the six or seven nursing students (called nurses) and the three women we in the US would call registered nurses (called sisters), and the head nurse (called the matron.) As this terminology hints, this is a good place to learn about nursing terminology, hierarchies, teaching methods, and costume of the pre-1980 years. (Uniforms, elaborate caps, capes.) These people are introduced to a visiting inspector and to the reader at the same time.
As the story begins it is not a normal morning at the nursing school. The hospital and the school are experiencing a flu epidemic and many students and nursing teachers are in what the US call the infirmary. So a substitute teacher is in charge. The lesson is a demonstration of inserting a feeding tube and feeding milk to a patient who cannot take nutrition by mouth. The student nurses themselves act as patients in these demonstrations, but the student nurse who was to have been the (I almost said victim) patient has the flu so another student is taking her place.
The demonstration does not go well. In fact, it goes disastrously badly and the student nurse really does become a victim - a victim of poisoning. The local police are unable to decide whether this is a practical joke gone bad or a murder, and if the latter whether it was the original student who was the target or the girl who actually died.
Two weeks later another student nurse is found dead in her bed or what appears to be poisoning. Opinions vary whether this was a suicide or murder. But at this point Scotland Yard is called and Adam Dalgliesh is assigned the case. As we have learned in earlier murders Dalgliesh is meticulous, demanding of his assistants, and works very fast. But this case - or these cases - are puzzling and the interviews with the student nurses, the sisters, and the matron don't reveal as much as he hopes. Gossip collected informally is more useful as are the perusal of some personnel records.
Usually I can figure out basically what is happening in a mystery, but this one left me stumped until the very end. And at the end I was startled by the quick plot reversals. Mystery writing at its best.
2012 No 91
I like the Adam Adam Dalgliesh stories, but I've not read this one - I'll look out for it.
Posted by: Christine Harding | Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 12:28 AM
It's pretty good, Christine. Innovative murder technique - gastric feeding.
Posted by: Mary Ronan Drew | Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 08:42 AM
Gosh, I don't know if I've read this, or if I saw the PBS version, or if just the story is familiar. I really, really should have a little PDJ marathon. You know which one I loved the best- the stigmata one. Whew!
Posted by: Nan | Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 12:57 PM
Nan, I've confused a couple of the books with the TV version, which can be quite different. I like the one that takes place at his aunt's house at the shore.
Posted by: Mary Ronan Drew | Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 01:48 PM