It was a little slow. I am not a huge fan of this style of mystery. More of a cozy hybrid mystery. Very slow pacing. Not sure if I will read the next one. ( )

Quick binge re-read of PD James' first published book. Interesting closed circle mystery set within the confines of a modest country house in the early 60s. There's a great deal of classism and snobbery amongst the main suspects, and James is always better at her rendering of the upper middle classes than the common people. Interesting to see the beginning of a change in attitude to "unmarried mothers" and rather shocking to discover that the "girl" in question is an adult of 22 (her apparent lack of agency suggested to me she was about 17). I enjoyed this book but there's always a curious feeling of distance in James's writing, a lack of warmth, or a clinical detachment which I find slightly uncomfortable. I'd not read this one for a long time and re-read after discovering its publication forced Agatha Christie to change the title of her last published Marple from "Cover her face" to "Sleeping Murder" - it fitted better with Christie's plot (though something of a spoiler). Also the cover of this edition (the bloodied telephone handset) has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. ( )

If this is typical PD James, then this is a case that the screen version is better than the books. This had unlikeable cliched characters, apart from the victim; and a huge give away clue early on. Disappointing. ( )

Maid For Murder
Review of the Sphere Books paperback edition (1974) of the original Faber & Faber hardcover (1962)

Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle; she died young. - John Webster (1580-1634), from "The Duchess of Malfi" (1614)

Dalgliesh pondered on the diversity of the clues which he felt were salient in the case. There was Martha’s significant reluctance to dwell on one of Sally’s shortcomings. There was the bottle of Sommeil pressed hastily into the earth. There was an empty cocoa tin, a golden-haired girl laughing up at Stephen Maxie as he retrieved a child’s balloon from a Martingale elm, an anonymous telephone call and a gloved hand briefly glimpsed as it closed the trap-door into Bocock's loft. And at the heart of the mystery, the clue that would make all plain, lay the complex personality of Sally Jupp. - Chief Detective Inspector Dalgliesh ponders the clues in Cover Her Face.

I decided to include P.D. James' (1920-2014) Adam Dalgliesh novels as one of my re-read binges due to the fortuitous discovery of several of the early paperbacks while I was emptying a storage locker. This went together with the discovery that there was a rebooted TV-series adapting the novels as well, which began in 2021.

See photo at https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FSug6xHWYAERmYI?format=jpg&name=medium
Rescued from storage and due for re-reading, my early P.D. James paperbacks, mostly published by Sphere Books from the 1980s.

Cover Her Face was actually quite surprising in that Inspector Dalgliesh is mostly in the background for a great portion of the book. We learn a considerable amount of the back story and the inner lives of the principle suspects quite separately from the police interviews. We do not learn very much about Dalgliesh at all, certainly not that he is a published poet which must have been a later additional feature to the character and separates him from all other fictional police detectives in my mind.

The case involves the strangulation murder of young unwed mother Sally Jupp, who is working as a maid for the Maxie household. The investigation reveals that various motives could be behind the murder including jealousy and revenge for possible blackmail. Prior to her death, Jupp had revealed that the Maxie's son Stephen had proposed marriage to her, even though he was supposedly attached already to another house guest Catherine. The rest of the household were not approving of Sally even prior to that, her being especially in conflict with the cook Martha. The daughter of the household Deborah is friends with house guest Felix, a possibly unstable PTSD survivor of the war. The family matriarch Eleanor is nursing her dying husband who is prescribed sleep medication for his restlessness. Meanwhile, other men have been seen lurking on the property.

The solution is complicated by the discovery that Sally Jupp's cocoa was drugged with sleep medication on the night of the murder. Was that a coincidence which was separate from the murderer's plot or part of it? The reveal comes in a standard golden-age of crime scenario where Dalgliesh gathers all of the suspects in a room for the finale.

I enjoyed my reacquaintance with Adam Dalgliesh in this first novel of P.D. James and look forward to further reads in the series.

Trivia and Links
Cover Her Face was adapted for television in 1985 as part of the long running Dalgliesh TV-series for Anglia Television (1983-1998) starring actor Roy Marsden as Chief Detective Inspector Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard. You can watch the entire 6 episodes of the 1985 adaptation on YouTube here (starting with Episode 1). NOTE: The TV adaptation is considerably different from the original novel.

There was a brief continuation TV-series for the BBC (2003-2005) starring Martin Shaw as Adam Dalgliesh, which did not include an adaptation of Cover Your Face.

The new reboot Dalgliesh Acorn TV-series (2021-?) starring Bertie Carver as Adam Dalgliesh has not yet done an adaptation of Cover Your Face. It has not been announced which books are being adapted for Season 2 (as of early July 2022). ( )

This was a lark - I'd never read a [[P.D. James]] and I'd just watched the British film adaptation of a Dalgliesh mystery. What's not to like about a noirish mystery with a poet detective, I thought. But this first book in the series had far too little of the Dalgliesh I saw on the screen - the film series is better than the book in this case. Dalgliesh doesn't even appear until the book is one-third gone. And, when he does, he's not near as captivating and interesting. I won't be reading any more of these, but I'll be watching!

3 bones!!! ( )