Phyllis James was not a writer who simply viewed murder as an excuse for a story. All her crime novels – whether starring her tall dark and handsome detective Adam Dalgliesh, who has not only written but actually published poetry, or her female detective Cordelia Gray – are serious explorations of the world in which they are set. An Anglican theological college in Death in Holy Orders or a long-established publishing firm in Original Sin provide the backdrop for a rigorous and unsentimental look at how English society works. She had a background as a civil servant in the criminal section of the Home Office and, later, as a life peer and governor of the BBC, that brilliantly qualified her for the task of analysing how the establishment works.
Her hero Dalgliesh, unlike so many other gentlemen detectives, is a serious and substantial figure, while Cordelia Gray is a totally credible struggling private eye who owes more to Raymond Chandler than the golden age of the English detective story.
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