| Product Summary | | Format: Hardcover | | ISBN: 9780307270771 | | Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group | | Publish Date: 11/18/2008 | | Buy.com Sku: 208085520 | | Item#: | | Dimensions (in Inches) 10.25H x 6.75L x 1.5T | | Pages: 368 |
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| | | Cheverell Manor is a lovely old house in deepest Dorset, now a private clinic belonging to the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell. When investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn arrived there one late autumn afternoon, scheduled to have a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar removed, she had every expectation of a successful operation and a pleasant week recuperating.
Two days later she was dead, the victim of murder.
To Commander Adam Dalgliesh, who with his team is called in to investigate the case, the mystery at first seems absolute. Few things about it make sense. Yet as the detectives begin probing the lives and backgrounds of those connected with the dead woman—the surgeon, members of the manor staff, close acquaintances—suspects multiply all too rapidly. New confusions arise, including strange historical overtones of madness and a lynching 350 years in the past. Then there is a second murder, and Dalgliesh finds himself confronted by issues even more challenging than innocence or guilt.
P. D. James has gained an enviable reputation for creating detective stories of uncommon depth and intricacy, combined with the sort of humanity and perceptiveness found only in the finest novelists. The Private Patient ranks among her very best.
Annotation:
The murder of a journalist at a plastic surgery clinic in Dorset confounds Commander Adam Dalgliesh in this exemplary entry into her canon by bestselling author P.D. James. Investigations into the doctor and other staff at the clinic, as well as the victim's past, do nothing to simplify the mystery, which seems tied to 350-year-old violences. And then there is another murder....With her trademark subtlety, James gives us another wholly satisfying piece of fiction.
| Praise| "[S]ufficient to reinvigorate hope and faith so rare in both fiction and reality today." 09/22/2008 |
| Author Bio| P. D. James | | P. D. James always dreamed of being a writer as a child, but her plans were temporarily waylaid by World War II and a subsequent successful career in civil service. She joined the Red Cross at the outset of the war and married Ernest White in 1941. Though they had two daughters together, their marriage was marred by chronic mental disturbances that her husband suffered after the war, which eventually led to his death. From 1949 to 1968, James worked in a hospital in London, but never forgot her first passion. In 1962 she published her first novel, "Cover Her Face", which featured Detective Adam Dalgliesh, the cultured, sensitive protagonist for which she is best known. Other critically acclaimed novels include the bestseller "Innocent Blood" (1980) and "An Unsuitable Job for a Woman" (1972), one of the first mysteries to feature a female investigator who is portrayed as capable of leading a dangerous investigation. James remained devoted to her career in civil service, working in the police department from 1968 to 1979 and serving on a variety of literary and arts councils after her retirement. |
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