The Private Patient by PD James

5 April 2012

One of the great pleasures of all crime fiction is simply frequenting the writer's world, regardless of the plot.

We enjoy being taken into the chilly Swedish town of Ystad, where Henning Mankell's Inspector Kurt Wallander lives. Reading James Lee Burke is as good as a trip to the American South. With Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti, we can wander around Venice and then go home with him for some Italian home-cooking.

PD James has always been strong on such vicarious pleasures. She loves describing fine buildings and noble landscapes, both in London and the British countryside. She reveres historic institutions such as colleges, libraries and churches and the formal and traditional manners they cultivate. She likes well-cooked food, good wine and the timely cup of tea.

In The Private Patient, these incidental treats are so fondly detailed they come almost to dominate the narrative. For anybody coming fresh to PD James, it would surely seem a very strange form of detective story indeed. For those of us who love to be able to dwell once more in her care as author, it's all the more enjoyable the more exaggerated these traits become.

Rhoda Gradwyn is a formidable investigative journalist. For more than 30 years, she has borne a severe facial scar inflicted when her drunken father hit her with a whisky bottle, when she was an adolescent. Only now has she decided to have cosmetic surgery.

She consults George Chandler-Powell, a top Harley Street specialist, and elects to have the operation at the private clinic at his house, Cheverell Manor, in Dorset.

It is an utterly splendid establishment, the centre of Chandler-Powell's life.

"He rejoiced in his possession, moving daily in the silence from the great hall to the library, from the long gallery to his rooms in the east wing with a quiet and undiminished triumph. He knew that the Manor couldn't hope to rival the magnificent great hall or gardens of Athelhampton, the breathtaking beauty of the setting of Encombe, or the nobility and history of Wolfeton. Dorset was rich in great houses. But this was his place and he wanted no other." So here Lady James has the closed world, provided in her last novel, The Lighthouse, by an island setting.

Cheverell Manor is lavishly staffed, with two cooks, a gardener-handyman, a general administrator, a retired governess to run the office, an assistant surgeon and his disaffected sister, and a strange young girl for general fetching and carrying, all resident.

So there are plenty of candidates for guilt, when murder is done. Since Rhoda Gradwyn's death is announced in the opening sentence of the novel, it is not giving too much away to reveal that she is the first to die, strangled in her bed, on the very day in which her scar has been successfully operated upon. Who can have wanted her dead and why? One of the other patients at the Manor is highly connected — so Commander Adam Dalgliesh is sent from London to investigate, accompanied once more by Inspector Kate Miskin and Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith.

In The Private Patient, we get the full works of the classic crime novel, from questioning of the whole household gathered in the library, to the possible forging of a will. But it is the incidentals that remain most delectable.

There are lots of Lady James's eloquent landscapes to admire. But the most remarkable quality of The Private Patient is the assiduity with which Lady James provides for her favourites (and by proxy for her readers). She is ever mindful of keeping them well-fed and watered. The procession of restorative sandwiches and soups, omelettes and casseroles, becomes almost surreal.

And Lady James is near-obsessed with the quality of the victuals on offer. Unwillingly attending her mother's remarriage, Rhoda Gradwyn finds the food and the service better than she had expected. "The cloth on the long table was immaculate, the cups and plates shone and her first bite confirmed that the ham in the sandwiches was fresh off the bone." There is only one crime novelist who could have written that sentence — and there are lots like it here.

When Dalgliesh arrives at the cottage put at his disposal at the Manor, we are reassured that thought has been given to his comfort: "The refrigerator had been stocked with sufficient provisions to keep him going for at least three days, including a casserole of obviously homemade lamb stew. There were also cans of beer and two bottles each of very drinkable red and white wine." After the shock of the murder, there's quite a protracted discussion of the best comfort food. "Pea soup is an excellent idea, hot, nourishing and comforting.

As you've got the stock it could be quickly made ... Serve the soda bread warm and with plenty of butter. A cheese board would be a good addition to the cold meats, people should have some protein, but don't overdo it ... And it would be a good idea to put out Kimberley's excellent home-made lemon curd and apricot jam with the bread. People in shock often crave something sweet." Whereas the last meal of a not so sympathetic murder victim has been disgracefully bought-in. "I found his mobile on the kitchen table among the remains of what could be his lunch or supper, a plate with congealed tomato sauce and a few strands of spaghetti and a plastic packet which had held two chocolate eclairs." In the world of Lady James, that last clause is as good as a death warrant..

PD James is 88 now, an extraordinary age to have published such a fine novel. At the end of The Private Patient, Dalgliesh reflects that this investigation "might well be his last". In the manner of Shakespearean comedy, the surviving characters are happily paired off.

Kate Miskin is reunited with her errant beau, Piers Tarrant. And, at last, Dalgliesh and Emma Lavenham are married in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. ("Why does emotion make one hungry? Knowing the bride and groom and the quality of the food from the college kitchen, we shan't be disappointed.No limp canapés and warm white wine.") But let us hope this is not farewell.

For there's no substitute for being able to lose ourselves once again in the world of PD James — home-made soups and all..

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

When the notorious investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn booked into Mr Chandler-Powell's private clinic in Dorset for the removal of a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar, she had every prospect of a successful operation by a distinguished surgeon, a week's peaceful convalescence in one of Dorset's most beautiful manor houses and the beginning of a new life. She was never to leave Cheverell Manor alive. Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate the murder, and later a second death, which are to raise even more complicated problems than the question of innocence or guilt.A new detective novel by P. D. James is always keenly awaited and "The Private Patient" will undoubtedly equal the success of her worldwide bestseller "The Lighthouse". It displays the qualities which P. D. James' readers have come to expect: a masterly psychological and emotional richness of characterisation, a vivid evocation of place and a credible and exciting mystery. "The Private Patient" is a powerful work of contemporary fiction.

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