Innocent House

Adam Dalgliesh #9.1 (taken from Original Sin)

by P.D. James

P.D. James has been writing extremely popular, highly praised crime novels for more than forty years, and Penguin is proud to publish them in paperback. Her most famous and enduring creation is the poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh, and in Innocent House - taken from Original Sin - he is confronted with a suspicious death and a puzzle at a respected publishing house.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Detective, British Literature, Crime

58 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 2005

About the author

P. D. James, byname of Phyllis Dorothy James White, Baroness James of Holland Park, (born August 3, 1920, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England—died November 27, 2014, Oxford), British mystery novelist best known for her fictional detective Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard.

The daughter of a middle-grade civil servant, James grew up in the university town of Cambridge. Her formal education, however, ended at age 16 because of lack of funds, and she was thereafter self-educated. In 1941 she married Ernest C.B. White, a medical student and future physician, who returned home from wartime service mentally deranged and spent much of the rest of his life in psychiatric hospitals. To support her family (which included two children), she took work in hospital administration and, after her husband’s death in 1964, became a civil servant in the criminal section of the Department of Home Affairs. Her first mystery novel, Cover Her Face (1962), introduced Dalgliesh and was followed by six more mysteries before she retired from government service in 1979 to devote full time to writing.

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.

James also wrote An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972) and The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982), which centre on Cordelia Gray, a young private detective. The first of these novels was the basis for both a television movie and a short-lived series. James expanded beyond the mystery genre in The Children of Men (1992; film 2006), which explores a dystopian world in which the human race has become infertile. Her final work, Death Comes to Pemberley (2011)—a sequel to Pride and Prejudice (1813)—amplifies the class and relationship tensions between Jane Austen’s characters by situating them in the midst of a murder investigation. James’s nonfiction works include The Maul and the Pear Tree (1971), a telling of the Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811 written with historian T.A. Critchley, and the insightful Talking About Detective Fiction (2009). Her memoir, Time to Be in Earnest, was published in 2000. She was made OBE in 1983 and was named a life peer in 1991.

Reviews

[Seyed Mohammad Reza Mahdavi · Rating 1 out of 5]

انگار یه بخش از یک کتاب را ترجمه و منتشر کرده اند. در حد چند فصل اول
بی سر و ته

[حسین نوروزپور · Rating 1 out of 5]

کتاب حاضر فصل‌های ابتدایی رمان گناه اصلی است
در واقع شما وقتی گرم داستان می‌شوید به دیوار می‌خورید
و چون آن کتاب اصلی هم ترجمه نشده است در خماری باقی می‌مانید
تجربه خودم را از این داستان می‌توانید در این آدرس بخوانید
http://hosseinkarlos.blogsky.com/1396...

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars. Not because the story isn't good, but because it turned out that it was just an extract from a novel. Which, when you're deaing with crime fiction, means that there is NO RESOLUTION WHATSOEVER. I woz robbed!

[Spencer Fancutt · Rating 1 out of 5]

The greatness of these little Penguin 70's is that you can grab a 50/60 page taster of authors that you wouldn't otherwise pick up. In this case, it gave me fair warning not to bother with a full novel of James'. She has a strange prose style which seems to be plodding, pedestrian, obvious, amateur porridge, sprinkled with fancy-pants words at a more or less constant frequency of one a page. After just finishing Zadie Smith's amazing White Teeth, coming down to this was a little too hard a landing. If you haven't read P.D.James before, read it after some non-fiction or romance to avoid the sudden change of quality.

[Coenraad · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can they do this to me?! Never having read P.D. James before, I relished this piece of writing: immediately peopled with fascinating characters and relationships, providing detailed visual descriptions and subtle hints of wrongdoing. Yet it is a bleeding chunk (as happened in the Penguin 60s book of Dick Francis's writing)! The first pages of the novel ORIGINAL SIN! Guess what my next Kindle search will be ...

Ek het nog nooit enige P.D. James-verhale gelees nie en hierdie bladsye was 'n vreugde weens die interessante karakters en verhoudings, die gedetailleerde beskrywings en die opnoem van besonderhede wat in die konteks van 'n misdaadverhaal veroorsaak dat die leser lont (of duur seep) ruik. Maar dis nie 'n afgeronde verhaal nie, dis die eerste stuk van 'n roman! Sug: nog iets om aan te koop en deur te lees teen die spoed van lig!

[Karen Barth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn't the book I thought it was, actually reading Original Sin, which is the complete work by PD James, not an extract.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Totally fine but annoyingly not a self contained story! Actually the first few chapters of Original Sin. So sets up the storyline but just leaves you hanging. Why bother.

[jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

works much less effectively than the rest of these pocket penguins by just presenting an extract of a crime novel rather than a short story itself. reads more as a snippet placed at the back of a book than something deserving of a front cover itself.

[Line · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Peter Metcalfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Tasty little morsel from the Lady of Crime

[Malzee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This edition left much to be desired in terms of completeness, but was fine if a reader was only after a taste. It provided an introduction to characters and plot, but as morsels that didn’t add up to a meal. #book5 #pocketpenguins #penguin70s

[Alix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, and the characters are believable and creative. The descriptions and atmosphere that James creates are superb -- he captured London really well. I would love to read more of his crime fiction.

[Gudný · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is very interesting, but i got a bit mad, when I realized that this isn't a small story, but part of the story "Original Sin". So for me to know what happens the story, i would have to buy the original book.

[Steve Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not fair that I now have to read the book that this extract is taken from: looking forward to it though.

[Eeva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tässä kirjassa oli mielenkiintoisia pohdintoja ja ihanaa Lontoo kuvausta..