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The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries) | 
| Author: P.d. James
Publisher: Knopf
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 167
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6 x 1.5
ISBN: 0307270777
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780307270771
ASIN: 0307270777
Publication Date: November 18, 2008
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Condition: Brand New!!! bce
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 32 more reviews...
 46 Years And Counting.... November 18, 2008
Tom S. (New York City)
95 out of 101 found this review helpful
In Cheverell Manor, an exclusive cosmetic surgery clinic on the remote Dorset moors, a patient has been murdered. Not just any patient: Rhoda Gradwyn was an investigative journalist, a purveyor of private secrets and sensational scandals for the "yellow" media. Anyone might have wanted her dead, given the opportunity, but Cheverell Manor is locked and guarded, reducing the suspect list to the odd group of eccentrics who were with her at the time. There are about a dozen of them--doctors, nurses, administrators, staff, and one other patient--and they all have something to hide. Fortunately for the cause of justice (and unfortunately for the killer), Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard has been sent out from London to look into the matter....
Some things just get better with age, and P. D. James's wonderful chronicle of Adam Dalgliesh is one of them. We first met him in 1962's COVER HER FACE, and THE PRIVATE PATIENT is his 14th adventure so far, making this the longest-running current British mystery series. There are indications throughout this story that it may be the last Dalgliesh novel. Let's hope and pray that it isn't. There's no other detective like Adam Dalgliesh, and there's no other mystery writer like the great P. D. James. Highly, highly recommended.
One of her best November 20, 2008
digerati (San Francisco, CA United States)
61 out of 62 found this review helpful
PD James fans are in for a treat in this finely crafted murder mystery. The set up is familiar: a murder occurs in a closed community; it looks like an inside job, which means there are only a handful of suspects -- but that doesn't make it easier for AD and his usual team to crack the case.
James gives us great characterization -- the opinions, desires and weaknesses are gradually revealed as the plot proceeds, and no character is superfluous. We learn more about our favorite characters: AD and Emma Lavenham are planning their wedding, Kate Miskin has broken up with Piers and Benton is developing into a more interesting character.
At the same time, James' weaves in a gorgeous portrayal of the Dorset countryside, making it part of the fabric of the storyline. Having lived there for a couple of years, this book perfectly captures the images, sounds and even smells of one of the most beautiful parts of England.
The plotting is intricate with many layers. Even if you guess whodunnit, there are layers upon layers of devices and desires so that at the end, everything has fallen into place, meshing perfectly with the characters and revealing hidden depths.
Without giving the end away, PD James also finishes up several character storylines. If she were never to write another book, the series would have reached a satisfying conclusion with this great work of fiction. A real treat and immensely enjoyable.
 A Loss of Momentum November 25, 2008
Eileen Pollock (New York, NY)
36 out of 42 found this review helpful
I wish I could give 5 stars to this, probably the last PD James mystery featuring the stalwart yet sensitive Commander Adam Dalgleish. Most of the book was 5 star material, with the winning PD James formula of isolated setting, cast of improbably named suspects, a gruesome murder or two, and meandering setting description with words like "minatory", "gule" and "subvention" cropping up early and often to establish once again the author's literary bona fides. (Emma wears not a jacket, but a jerkin, as we are reminded three times in three pages.) The final 80 pages were however a disappointment, a rushed flurry of events, interviews with newly found characters appended in too-neat resolution. The ending seemed hardly connected to the build-up that preceded it. If a mystery lacks a satisfying conclusion, all the previous story-telling seems futile. Sorry to say, I have seen a loss of momentum in PD James's last several mysteries. She takes pains to keep up with the times, but her unnecessary subplot about lesbians is so painstakingly tolerant, so jarring, so entirely lacking in narrative reality. The effort to be open-minded is always just that - an effort, and the display of faux acceptance self-consciously calls attention to itself because it rings false and extraneous to the story. Poor Dalgleish, as I remember from earlier novels, was always more interesting as a solitary poet/police officer. Since he acquired a continuing romantic interest, the incongruously young Emma Lavenham, he has become too comfortably uxorious. His depth has dissipated. The detective sidekicks, Miskin and Benton, while again politically correct, are never as interesting as was Dalgleish at his philosophical best. Dare I add that the dialogue is simply not believable? Only in a PD James novel do characters speak in such perfectly shaped paragraphs.
The best things get better with age... November 20, 2008
S. McGee (New York, NY)
31 out of 32 found this review helpful
This is not P.D. James's finest mystery novel.
That said, even something that is a notch below this wonderful writer's prime still stands head and shoulders above most of what is being produced by the vast majority of her peers. Her writing, her careful attention to detail, her descriptive powers have only improved with age.
So, too, have the deductive skills of Adam Dalgliesh, many decades after he made his first appearance in the novels penned by this doyenne of crime. He remains as intriguing and occasionally enigmatic figure as ever, although James gives us more carefully-judged glimpses into his inner life than I can recall in any previous novel.
In this outing (hopefully not his final one...), Dalgliesh investigates one of his classic conundrums: a murder that could only have been committed by one of a closed circle of suspects. (That backdrop, typical of James's mysteries, enables her to delve deeply into character and motivation, which is what, together with her writing, transforms this from an ordinary whondunnit into a fabulous read.) Rhoda Gradwyn has finally decided, at the age of 47, to have the disfiguring scar on her face removed at the manor house/clinic run by a noted plastic surgeon. The operation is a success -- but the patient dies. It's murder, and Dalgliesh and his team are summoned to find out who had the most compelling motive to want this muck-racking journalist dead.
It is a mark of the strength of James's characters that we feel compassion for everyone from the victim -- hoping to leave behind some of her internal scars along with the visible one on her face -- to the murderer. A second death raises the stakes still further and Dalgliesh -- on the eve of achieving personal happiness -- must battle to ensure that the case is resolved while doing as little damage as possible to the many other damaged individuals who people the world of Cheverell Manor.
I found the identity of the murderer perhaps a little easier to pick up before the final revelations than in James's prior books, and could argue that perhaps the narrative dragged in a handful of places. Still, set against such high-calibre writing -- not a single false note throughout -- those feel like minor quibbles and even voicing them risks making me feel curmudgeonly.
PD James has produced yet another novel that leads the crime fiction genre and, in parts, transcends it. While Ruth Rendell's Wexford novels are wonderful, they are more procedural, and her psychological suspense novels, while excellent, are too extreme for the reader to feel at ease with them in the same way that we do with Dalgliesh and his fellow characters. Each of the latter are human, and it is those human foibles that lead to the crime itself. While solving the crime is the raison d'etre of the book, it is again James's ability to address human nature that ultimately takes center stage.
As always, I finished this book wishing that I hadn't yet read it, so that I'd have the pleasure of discovering it for the first time. My only wish now is that P.D. James becomes a healthy centenarian and continues crafting her works for decades more. I'd love it if Adam Dalgliesh didn't take his well-earned retirement, but if he does, I'm confident that the author can come up with an equally compelling protagonist for another series...
Under the knife November 23, 2008
E. A Solinas (MD USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Most people who die because of plastic surgery have a bad reaction to the anesthetic or something like that.
Few plastic surgery patients are strangled. But that is the crime du jour of the fourteenth Adam Dalgleish novel, a quietly tangled web of motives and suspicious characters in a classic mystery setting. But P.D. James elevates your average whodunnit with her refined brand of police investigation, as well as the bittersweet meditations on aging, love and loneliness.
For the past thirty years, investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn has had a chasmic scar on her face. But now she decides to have it repaired by the eminent plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell, at his beautiful old manorhouse. But mere hours after the surgery, Rhoda is found strangled, and Adam Dalgleish is called in to investigate who in the Manor wanted her dead.
Turns out that there are a number of motives, some more coldly rational than others -- Rhoda's boytoy, the mentor of a girl Gradwyn destroyed, and a young woman with a gruesome past. With plenty of people who could have done it, Dalgleish must unravel who actually did do it, and the secret motives that others are keeping hidden. But he may not be in time to prevent more deaths...
"The Private Patient" is a book preoccupied by the passage of time. Lonely futures, sad pasts, the "flattening" of aging, the world changing and people losing their family homes. Even Dalgleish's impending wedding has a bittersweet edge, since it heralds changes among his friendships. Yet P.D. James makes sure to remind us that love and friendship can overcome the sadness of change and loss.
And with the sure hand of an experienced writer, James spins a solid whodunnit with plenty of red herrings and a wealth of suspects. While the first few chapters are a bit slow -- do we REALLY need the life story of every member of the Manor staff? -- everything speeds up after the first murder. It quietly chugs along up through ghastly backstories (the child-murder case), right up to the hallucinatory, fiery climax at a ring of stones where an alleged witch was once burned.
While most of the story is devoted to basic police investigations, James also fills it with a beautiful, picturesque atmosphere ("... burnishing the trunks of the beech tees and bathing the stones of the manor in a silvery glow") and literary allusions (Oscar Wilde and Thomas Hardy, among others). Most strikingly, she gives the modern police grind a refined, elegant edge that harkens back to a previous age.
And James handles Dalgleish with fondness and warmth, whether it's making a horribly awkward visit to his future father-in-law (very "Importance of Being Earnest") or navigating a crime maze with his partners. And he has some personal problems to deal with as well, since some close friends are victims of a horrible crime -- plus there's that whole impending wedding thing.
As befits a mystery, the supporting characters are given the shadowy dimensions of acquaintances -- we have some idea of their lives and personalities, but not really whether they are the murderer. And James handles some of the seemingly cliche characters -- the crazy girl, the prettyboy wastrel, the haughty doctor -- quite gracefully.
"The Private Patient" is a murder mystery that blossoms into a bittersweet exploration of passing time, with haunting writing and a solid plot. Definitely deserving of notice.
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