In between reading The Insider, pick up a book from the Concord Public Library. We won’t mind and promise to love you just the same, if not more!
The Private Patient
P.D. James
2008, 352 pages
Setting: Contemporary England
Investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn decides to have cosmetic surgery on a disfiguring facial scar she’s had since childhood. She arrives at the private clinic located in Cheverell Manor in Dorset expecting to have the operation and a pleasant week of recovery. Two days later she’s dead. Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called in to investigate and soon there are multiple suspects, a tangle of motives, inferences to events that occurred at the manor house 350 years earlier, and a second murder to add to the confusion. After some false starts, Dalgliesh and his team are finally able to close the case, although not as neatly as one might expect.
James has done it again – written a complex detective story that keeps you thinking and guessing all the way to the end. At 88 years old, we can only wonder how many more quality detective stories we can expect from her. If you’ve never read P. D. James before, there are 13 earlier Dalgliesh titles to keep you occupied this winter.
Ginny Babczak
Reference Librarian
