Scan barcode
A review by jenn756
Shroud for a Nightingale by P.D. James
4.0
I enjoyed this. P D James is a remarkably consistent writer, so if you like closed community whodunits, lots of twists and turns and false alibis – and I happen to do so - this is your novel. Otherwise you’ll find it slow and ponderous.
It is set in a nursing training home in the late sixties. Its description of nursing is inadvertently a bit of social history itself, for I think nursing training has changed dramatically since those days. The story is slow starting, not withstanding the grisly murder in the first chapter, and it took me awhile to get into but once I did I was gripped in a gentle kind of way. A good novel if you happen to be ill or on a long journey.
Having said all that Dalgleish is an annoying detective as ever. He supposed to be sardonic and attractive but is actually just dull. He could do with being murdered himself. Fortunately we don’t see his personal life in the novel, for I have no desire to read about his poetry or love affairs and probably would have skipped that part. P D James doesn’t do love very well and lacks a sense of humour, so she is not witty as say, Caroline Graham would be and almost all her characters are unsympathetic. She enjoys doing detailed pen portraits of people, which are entertaining but are generally unflattering. Other people have pointed she just didn’t like the human race very much and I suppose they might be right. Still, doesn’t detract from it being a good novel.
And oh yes, I spotted the murderer in Chapter Two, which says more about the fact that I’ve read too many detective books than my powers of deduction.
It is set in a nursing training home in the late sixties. Its description of nursing is inadvertently a bit of social history itself, for I think nursing training has changed dramatically since those days. The story is slow starting, not withstanding the grisly murder in the first chapter, and it took me awhile to get into but once I did I was gripped in a gentle kind of way. A good novel if you happen to be ill or on a long journey.
Having said all that Dalgleish is an annoying detective as ever. He supposed to be sardonic and attractive but is actually just dull. He could do with being murdered himself. Fortunately we don’t see his personal life in the novel, for I have no desire to read about his poetry or love affairs and probably would have skipped that part. P D James doesn’t do love very well and lacks a sense of humour, so she is not witty as say, Caroline Graham would be and almost all her characters are unsympathetic. She enjoys doing detailed pen portraits of people, which are entertaining but are generally unflattering. Other people have pointed she just didn’t like the human race very much and I suppose they might be right. Still, doesn’t detract from it being a good novel.
And oh yes, I spotted the murderer in Chapter Two, which says more about the fact that I’ve read too many detective books than my powers of deduction.