The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh #14)
The scorpion tail of P.D. James' prose has lost none of its sting in this, her 17th novel. The setting is a lovely English manor in Dorset that has been converted to a surgical clinic, and the victim is a well-known investigative journalist who has come to the clinic. The suspects are as deeply complex as any characters James has created, and Commander Dalgleish exposes their motives with a surgical finesse. The Private Patient is intricate, novelistic, and engrossing.
Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Part of the bestselling mystery series that inspired Dalgliesh on Acorn TV
Cheverell Manor is a beautiful old house in Dorset, which its owner, the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell, uses as a private clinic. When the investigative journalist, Rhoda Gradwyn, arrives to have a disfiguring facial scar removed, she has every expectation of a successful operation and a peaceful week recuperating. But the clinic houses an implacable enemy and within hours of the operation Rhoda is murdered. Commander Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate a case complicated by old crimes and the dark secrets of the past. But Before Rhoda's murder is solved, a second horrific death adds to the complexities of one of Dalgliesh's most perplexing and fascinating cases.
Praise for The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh #14)
"Brilliant. . . . A jewel in [James's] crown." —Pittsburg-Post Gazette
"No one is better than James at maintaining this tension between the cozy and the frightful." —The Washington Post
"[James is] a master. . . . Nothing is as it first appears." —The Boston Globe
"[I]intricately plotted and suspenseful.... James' clear-eyed, often sardonic prose describes rooms and people exactly as she sees them." —Providence Journal
"Elegant . . . compelling. . . . Continues the James tradition. . . . She comfortably tackles timeless concerns." —Chicago Tribune
"The ghost of literature past haunts P.D. James' newest novel. . . . The novel's pointed descriptions, its gothic settings, and its theme exploring the insidious legacies of family and class violence suggest Charles Dickens may have rested a hand on James' shoulder while she wrote this terrific literary mystery." —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"James is a wonderful writer." —Chicago Sun-Times
"James is in excellent form. . . . [She] offers her readers intelligence, wisdom, dry humor, knowledge both deep and wide-ranging, humanity, compassion, understanding and a wonderful way with words. . . . James is one of Britain's greatest living writers." —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
