Queen of crime

P.D. James was so good at her genre that her aloof intellectualism reflected in the characters she created.

December 06, 2014 06:00 pm | Updated April 07, 2016 03:12 am IST

Author P.D. James

Author P.D. James

Several years ago, I had an argument with a colleague — a connoisseur of detective fiction — about who was better at the genre: men or women? The colleague said that men were far superior (although he was a man, he was not being chauvinistic; he personally found the psychological drama in women’s writing needless) and named some very well-known writers in his argument.

And yet, what is a crime if stripped of its psychological baggage? A random act of violence — possibly brutal, but intrinsically meaningless. And the essence of crime fiction surely is meaning. The ‘why’ must be as significant as the ‘how’. And P.D. James was a clear winner in that category.

James was often called the successor to Agatha Christie, especially in her early days of success. Christie too dwelt on the psychology of the crime, whether through Hercule Poirot’s grey cells or Miss Marple’s careful and intimate study of village life.

But James took Christie to another level, adding depth and mystery. Alfred Hitchcock perfected suspense by anticipation: the audience knew what the characters didn’t.

James did the opposite. She masterfully kept her readers guessing. James once called Jane Austen’s books ‘Mills and Boon written by a genius’. One could safely transfer the compliment to her by substituting Mills and Boon with crime fiction.

Much of James’ success must also be shared by her poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh, a high romantic figure if there ever was one. From his first appearance in Cover Her Face , Dalgliesh was a winner.

He was mysterious enough and deep enough to be a romance hero and he certainly showed enough compassion but he was always more. There was a particular ruthless, aloof intellectualism with which he solved the puzzle that made it even more appealing and pulled you into the next book.

James also created a female detective, Cordelia Gray, in Unsuitable Job for a Woman . She and Dalgliesh even had a brief encounter. But James then abandoned her — the character was killed for the writer in a sense by her television avatar who got pregnant after an affair: “I realised my character was gone.” Gray’s second Cordelia Gray book, The Skull Beneath the Skin , came 10 years after the first so the focus always was Dalgliesh.

John Webster’s words in The Duchess of Malfi , “Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle. She died young” are a favourite with crime writers and pop up all over the place. It is hardly surprising: Like all Webster’s writing, they have a haunting quality made all the more poignant by the cruel and macabre nature of the play. Cover Her Face then is a fitting introduction for a first novel to James and to Dalgliesh himself, the thinking person’s detective.

There was criticism at the time that James concentrated only on middle class England. This is a particular complaint of the politically correct British establishment who want a sprinkling of poor, preferably proud persons, from the non-upper classes and persons of non-white origin to properly reflect British society.

Readers elsewhere hardly care. In any case, since these so-called middle or upper class people are involved in full scale murder of each other with all its attendant sins, they hardly show themselves in the best light.

But that is a digression. James’ settings are varied although there are recurring themes. Dalgliesh’s father was a vicar so the church returns again and again and not always in glowing praise from on high. Dalgliesh puts his suspects and himself through a rigorous sometimes excoriating scrutiny and it is James who makes you feel it. Stately homes, retirement homes, the desolate Norfolk coast, a lighthouse in Cornwall, a nurse’s hostel, a ‘murder room’ in a museum in London — all evocatively and incisively described. And so exquisitely created and felt that you are swept away right into the psychology — yes, that word again of the murderer and the unravelling of the mystery by the genius of Dalgliesh.

James is supposed to have asked, when she heard about Humpty-Dumpty who sat on a wall, as a four-year-old, “Did he fall or was he pushed?” So even if her aim was not to be a crime writer, the gain has been all ours and there is no loss at all. She died at 94 and her last novel, Death Comes to Pemberley was a sequel if you will to Pride and Prejudice , seamlessly blending Jane Austen with her own consummate craft.

At the end, what happens to the argument about men and women and detective fiction. That Phyllis Dorothy was her full name was not immediately known with her first success. I would like to imagine that someone somewhere was fooled into thinking she was a man, picked up a book, was hooked and didn’t care. Or forget it, maybe even Dalgliesh couldn’t work this mystery out.

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