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A review by tomhill
Innocent Blood by P.D. James
4.0
"Perhaps that was why revenge was so satisfying; it worked."
P.D. James is a cut above your average mystery writer. Her prose is wonderful to read, and in her best work it's elegant and literary. I've read the two Cordelia Gray novels, which are excellent, and a couple of Dalgliesh books, which are also very good. Innocent Blood contains all the strongest elements of those more traditional detective stories, but it's different in many ways too. It's even darker and more cynical than the other P.D. James I've read, and delves pretty deep when exploring grief and its ripple effects. There's nothing too graphic depicted here, but there are brief descriptions, like a quick flash of an image on screen, which are unsettling in a different way than long descriptions of violence would be. The book has kind of a sluggish start, and it does drag in some spots, but if you don't mind more leisurely paced crime novels, you can't go wrong with P.D. James.
P.D. James is a cut above your average mystery writer. Her prose is wonderful to read, and in her best work it's elegant and literary. I've read the two Cordelia Gray novels, which are excellent, and a couple of Dalgliesh books, which are also very good. Innocent Blood contains all the strongest elements of those more traditional detective stories, but it's different in many ways too. It's even darker and more cynical than the other P.D. James I've read, and delves pretty deep when exploring grief and its ripple effects. There's nothing too graphic depicted here, but there are brief descriptions, like a quick flash of an image on screen, which are unsettling in a different way than long descriptions of violence would be. The book has kind of a sluggish start, and it does drag in some spots, but if you don't mind more leisurely paced crime novels, you can't go wrong with P.D. James.