The Murder Room (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series #12) - Hardcover

P. D. James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400041414 ISBN 13: 9781400041411

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003

The Dupayne, a small private museum on the edge of London's Hampstead Heath devoted to the interwar years 1919-39, is in turmoil. The trustees--the three children of the museum founder, old Max Dupayne--are bitterly at odds over whether it should be closed. Then one of them is brutally murdered, and what seemed to be no more than a family dispute erupts into horror. For even as Commander Adam Dalgiesh and his team investigate the first killing, a second corpse is discovered. Clearly, someone at the Dupayne is prepared to kill, and kill again.

The case is fraught with danger and complexity from the outset, not least because of the range of possible suspects--and victims. And still more sinister, the murders appear to echo the notorious crimes of th epast featured in one of the museum's most popular galleries, the Murder Room.

For Dalgiesh, P.D. James's formidable detective, the search for the murderer poses an unexpected complication. After years of bachelorhood, he has embarked on a promising new relationship with Emma Lavenham--first introduced in Death in Holy Orders--which is at a critical stage. Yet his struggle to solve the Dupayne murders faces him with a frustrating dilemma: each new development distances him further from commitment to the woman he loves.

The Murder Room is a story dark with the passions that lie at the heart of crime, a masterful work of psychological intricacy. It proves yet again that P.D. James fully deserves her place among the best of modern novelists.

From the Back Cover:

Praise for Death in Holy Orders, The National Bestseller
“Baroness James of Holland Park has lost none of her power as a storyteller. Death in Holy Orders is a great novel about Heaven, Hell, death and judgment.” -- The Globe and Mail

“James is a delight to read, a writer in love with the language as much as her characters and her detailed plots.... This is an exquisite book, perfect in its details.” -- Winnipeg Free Press

“P. D. James’s latest mystery novel, Death in Holy Orders, reconfirms her place high in the panoply of contemporary crime writers.... This is a book to be savoured.” -- National Post

About the Author:

P. D. James is the author of 17 previous books, most of which have been filmed for television. Before her retirement in 1979, she served in the forensics and criminal justice departments of Great Britain’s Home Office, and she has been a magistrate and a governor of the BBC. The recipient of many prizes and honours, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. In 2000 she celebrated her 80th birthday and published her autobiography, Time to Be in Earnest.