P. D James is a master of the mystery. I just finished her most recent novel starring the wonderful Adam Dalgiesh, entitled The Private Patient, and it was good. But this time the master did not produce a masterpiece: it was not great. Her last Dalgliesh mystery, The Lighthouse, was great: it combined lots of great stuff about the multi-layered, multi-talented Dalgliesh, his burgeoning love affair with Emma, and his relationship with the growing ever-more mature Kate Miskin, together with a nail-biting plot of filial duty, murder, and quarantine.
The Private Patient falls short because we get only pieces of Dalgliesh (more on what we get below) and other than a fantastic almost-last scene (the final flourish is less than fantastic), we get only miserable people in a plodding plot. What makes this novel good is the above-mentioned thrilling scene and the always perfect touches of interiors. James is an expert at painting both the physical and the mental interiors of her characters. In this novel, we get to peek into a manor house, a cottage, a clergyman’s home, a teacher’s office, a bungalow, Kate Miskin’s sleek digs, and the most wonderful home ever described by James, a skinny and tall ancient house within the City of London, the home of our murdered lady. And we get to look into some seriously deranged brains.
Speaking of deranged, in this novel Dalgliesh just seems really weird and Emma is a neurotic, uptight priss who can never make the chief happy. Nor will retirement make him happy and yet he threatens to retire! How can he, after solving so lamely this case of a murdered reputation-murderer, a prickly character who we give not a wahoochie about, despite her sad history. Perhaps we have no sympathy for her because of her repugnant choice of self-redemption: she turned to sleazy investigative journalism to escape her pathetic past. But the ones she’s trashed in print will come back to get their own revenge.
There are many more suffering children in this novel than usual, and they’ve all grown up into monsters. Miserable monsters makes for a great story and James usually weaves a great story, but somehow she just doesn’t make us care as much this time around. Without caring from the reader, there is no masterpiece from the writer; there is no great book, just a good one.
What James does give us in this novel is her truth behind all crimes she’s ever created for Adam Dalgliesh to solve: there is no good reason for a violent crime. The crimes are unpreventable –inevitable — because they were the result of choices unreasonably made. James has a character in this novel openly deride Thomas Hardy and his pathetic characters who make such bad choices: “I find depressing his determination to make his characters suffer even when a little common sense on both his part and theirs could avoid it.” But no one has common sense when threatened. Whether the threat is real or perceived, a person under stress of virtual or metaphysical annihilation will strike out. That is James’ point and that is why we need gun laws and enforced orders of protection and social services that pay attention. But back to the novel….
The characters in this novel are threatened, or have been threatened, or anticipate a horrible threat, and so they act. With cunning and with energy, or with apathetic drudging to the drum of vengeance, but absolutely without common sense. How lucky for us, for if they behaved properly and with due regard for reason and sense, we would have no police procedural to read, no character portraits with peculiarities borne of a variety of mental and physical abuse, and no thrilling conclusion involving burning witches and drowning waters.
