Shroud for a Nightingale (Inspector Adam Dalgliesh Mystery)

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It seems contradictory, but this is still a 5 star book even if it has to come with an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert ™. P.D. James is definitely hitting her stride here with her trademark style of novels set in "an enclosed world, seething with malice, intrigue, hatred and murder.*" Written in a completely classic style this may seem a bit slow-moving for modern tastes, but is downright explosive when compared with earlier, similar, stories. I've recently been reading Mignon Eberhart's nursing mysteries from the 1930s, and if you want "slow-moving thriller" (not *exactly* an oxymoron...), then her earliest work is for you! But while Eberhart was entertaining, James is an overall much better writer, and it is fascinating to see here how little of the attitudes towards nurses and their craft had changed in the intervening forty years. And while outside of the small-hospital environment (the nurses live-in, and don't spend much time in The Real World) things are changing rapidly in the social sense, here the ethos is of an older Britain even in 1970 - the values are traditional, the plotting traditional, the writing style traditional. But not stuffy, not at all boring. James obviously read and admired Christie, as did most women readers (and writers!) of her generation. Early on in her career you can easily see how Christie and Sayers et. al. have influenced her. But James then goes on to actually improve upon their writing style, at least IMO, becoming one of the best current practitioners of the "traditional style" mystery now living and still writing. As she's extremely elderly now, I suspect she won't be publishing much more in the future, alas. So savor her earlier works if and when you can - while quite old-fashioned they're still a treat! If there's a suspicion of foul play ought we to move the body?" Mr. Courtney-Briggs said sharply: "I have no intention of moving the body."

Someone had substituted a cream-looking disinfectant for the warm milk used in a teaching session on feeding a patient by intragastric tube. Nurse Heather Pearce, the student subject, died a painful death. Sixteen days later, Josephine Fallon, the intended target of the deadly teaching session who had been excused that day because of influenza, is poisoned in her room after a quiet evening watching television. Again, the tightknit community would like to believe her death was a suicide, not a murder. Stephen Colbert Forced To Cancel 'The Late Show' This Week After Undergoing Surgery For Ruptured Appendix Sister Gearing cast an apprehensive and interrogative glance at the Matron, received a confirmatory nod and resumed her lesson. An almost-graduated nursing student is killed while playing the patient in a demonstration/instruction lecture before a visiting VIP. It might have been suicide - the girl was extremely religious, temperamental, moody, and prone to extremes of behavior - much of it rather unforgiving, and some of it perhaps illegal. As the local police work their way through the suspect list and information they've gathered, no real conclusion is reached and the case goes cold. But before too long another student is dead under suspicious circumstances, and the "coincidence" is too much for one high-powered doctor connected with the training facility to endure. He calls Scotland Yard himself, and Adam Dalgleish is assigned to the case, along with Sargent Masterson, a young, not exactly raw (but not far removed from it either) policeman with a slight tendency for bullying witnesses. He's got a lot to learn. James is a peerless creator of atmosphere. She herself has always claimed that the first thing that comes to her when embarking upon a new novel is the setting. Undoubtedly, Nightingale House, the setting for most of the events in this book, singularly inappropriate for a nursing college, is almost as vividly described as any of the characters. It is a dark, nasty house, an evil house, where crimes of abuse, neglect and death had previously taken place. The final scene, when the house is finally demolished, is a masterpiece of descriptive writing which conveys so much more than just a sense of place.

A nursing school inspection ends horribly with the death of a student during a demonstration of intra-gastric feeding tubes. This gruesome beginning is compounded with a second student death, and the local police are exchanged for the Yard’s Inspector Adam Dalgliesh whose implacable determination to get at the truth is welcomed by the nursing staff with varying degrees of coolness.

CRIME/PLOT = 3 stars: The first murder is wildly original and is indeed disturbing. The second not so much as it is rather bland, even for this genre: it's that typical/expected 2nd murder that you just know is right around the corner. Sometimes it works, sometimes, like here, it's about word count. At several points the main character is discussing the case with his assistant and, despite the fact they've already talked about the evidence and what they think and he's the current viewpoint character and we follow both of them through everything important they do, their important deductions are covered up with sudden reported speech, like "he said what had happened, his assistant said yes that's obvious". Like are you *kidding* me how lazy can you getSuspicion first falls on Christine Dakers (Helen Aluko), who seemed to be the only nursing student who associated with Pearce. But Dalgliesh isn’t convinced; he still thinks that Dr. Courtney-Briggs, who turns out has associations with Fallon and Sister Brumfett (Amanda Root), one of the school’s instructors. Brumfett is consistently seen at the side of the school’s matron, Mary Taylor (Natasha Little), who chafes less at the presence of Dalgliesh and Masterson than any of her staff seems to. But we can't leave her here, not like this!" Miss Gearing was almost weeping in protest. The surgeon glared at her. The BBC revived the character with Martin Shaw in the part in the early 2000s and I thought Shaw was miscast. But we don’t really find out much more about Dalgliesh, or his partner, Charles Masterson, than what we see during the course of the investigation. In that respect, Dalgliesh (actually pronounced almost like “dog leash”), is truly a classic British police procedural. You’re not going to find out a ton about the main characters unless you’re already familiar with James’ novels or one of the many Dalgliesh adaptations.

Dalgliesh, James’s master detective who rises from chief inspector in the first novel to chief superintendent and then to commander, is a serious, introspective person, moralistic yet realistic. The novels in which he appears are peopled by fully rounded characters, who are civilized, genteel, and motivated. The public resonance created by James’s singular characterization and deployment of classic mystery devices led to most of the novels featuring Dalgliesh being filmed for television. James, who earned the sobriquet “Queen of Crime,” penned 14 Dalgliesh novels, with the last, The Private Patient, appearing in 2008. Right. If tube feeding is to continue for more than forty-eight hours we must ensure that the diet is adequate in calories, protein and vitamins. At what temperature are you giving the feed, Nurse?"

Rate And Review

Actor Bertie Carvel as Adam Dalgliesh in the Acorn TV series "Dalgliesh" (2021-). Image sourced from IMDb. Richard Harrington (Hinterland) as Dr David Rollinson - a forensic biologist who worked on dozens of cases with Lorrimer Details about the unsatisfactory ending would be a spoiler, but let us say in general that it does not feel satisfactory when justice is not fully served directly, but must come by later indirect means. None of that can downgrade a high rating for the buildup atmosphere of paranoia, the persistence of the investigators, the detailed character building of a very large cast, and the final twist unveiling of the solution.

But here at last was the signpost. The road to the John Carpendar Hospital led upward from the High Street between a broad avenue of trees. To the left was a high stone wall which bounded the hospital grounds. There are chase scenes, murders-in-progress, a couple of nasty assaults, one or two very funny set-pieces (particularly Sargent Masterson's involvement with a ballroom dancing contestant...) and a lot of suspense and gloomy forboding along with really superb characterizations. And the ending exposition while a bit slow in spots is fascinating, and absolutely beautifully done, weaving in every little thread and bit of earlier-presented information we'd been given, while still making us/allowing us to "feel for" the people involved. Really fine writing. It still has an antique feel, though, for a book published in 1971. It has 1950s gender sensibilities (the assumption that a woman, once married, will end her career or her studies), it has that obsession with spinsters so irresistible to British mystery writers ("she was a thin, brown-skinned woman, brittle and nobbly as a dead branch who looked as if the sap had long since dried in her bones"), and it still features the generalized misanthropy that Christie seemed to bequeath to the genre; nearly all the suspects are hateful, bitter, or piteous in some way.nightingale) из женской разведсети, воспетому Кристиной Ханной, роман "Тайна Найтингейла" (Shroud for a Nightingale) отношения не имеет. Хотя отголоски событий Второй Мировой сыграют здесь немалую роль, а местом действия окажется школа медсестер. Nurse Goodale asked sharply: "What was she wearing?" Maureen was unsurprised at this apparently irrelevant question.