First published in 1962, Cover Her Face is the first of P. D. James’ mysteries with Detective Inspector, Adam Dalgliesh, as the protagonist. Although you do not learn this fact in the first Adam Dalgliesh book, he is also a poet.
In today’s world, writers are told that they should “drop the body” as soon as possible in the narrative. Cover Her Face was written in a different time, so the first two to three chapters of the book set the scene for the mystery, an English country manor house which the Maxies have owned for over three hundred years. In 1962, however, the family is slowly sliding down the ranks of the gentility due to the high taxes imposed in post-war Britain. Not only do the first few chapters set the scene, they also serve to relentlessly push the reader forward into a sense of unease. The reader knows someone soon will be murdered but is not entirely sure who and how.
When the victim is found murdered in her bed, with her infant child awake and in his crib, the reader is no wiser than Detective Dalgliesh as to who did the killing. And Baroness James (P. D. James was given a life peerage by Queen Elizabeth in 1991) deftly winds the reader through the labyrinth of cryptic clues and red herrings that Detective Dalgliesh patiently deciphers, brick by brick, until he can lay the answer bare to all concerned. The writer has a gift for describing life in a small British town, as shown by this short excerpt. The writer describes Mrs. Maxie, one of the suspects at the manor house, being greeted by other shoppers at the local grocery store shortly after the murder:
The little village store was rather busier than usual and the buzz of talk which stopped as soon as she appeared left her in no doubt as to the subject of conversation. Mrs. Nelson was there, Miss Pollack, old Simon from the Weir cottage who was claimed as the oldest inhabitant and seemed to think that this absolved him from any effort at personal hygiene, and one or two of the woman from the new agricultural cottages whose faces and personalities, if any, were still strange to her. There was a general murmur of “Good morning” in reply to her own greeting and Miss Pollack went so far as to say, “Lovely day again, isn’t it?” before hurriedly consulting her shopping list and trying to conceal her red face behind the barricades of breakfast cereal….
Two central themes in the book are the treatment of unwed mothers, and issues that arise in a society with stratified classes. Because of this, it is important to remember that this book was written over sixty years ago when different mores were in place.
If you are looking for an interesting read, and don’t mind a slightly slower pace, I highly recommend this book.
