false 38443399 1608124 4162673 0571242448 9780571242443 321 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4162673.The_Private_Patient 3.59 1058 344522 3.71 18961 2092 4 1 false Wed Nov 26 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 23 07:07:23 -0800 2008 Fri Nov 28 20:06:41 -0800 2008 Once, so far.
What could be more English than a country house murder? In The Private Patient P.D. James summons up the shades of Conan Coyle and Agatha Christie in murder most foul of a patient at a stately country manor turned medical clinic. Means, motive and opportunity are all on offer for everyone on the premises, from the self-absorbed doctor, the idealistic assistant, the lovelorn nurse, the dispossessed heir and the devoted nanny to the overprotective sister and the insular villager. Upon this menage descends Scotland Yard’s Commander Adam Dalgleish in usual deus ex machina fashion, and the game is afoot.

But here your conventional crime fiction novel parts ways with tradition to be elevated to the level of art by James’ firm-handed, faultless use of language, her layering of character, her evocation of setting, and above all by her merciless view of the present state of British civilization, warts and all. In James’ opinion, the view is mostly warts, and her Churchillian rage at what she sees as the deliberate debasement of English society since World War II from a culture that strove for excellence to one that embraces mediocrity wafts up from every other page. In places she really lets herself off the chain (“They had lived to see their simple patriotism derided, their morality despised, their savings devalued.”) without ever throwing the reader off the scent of the narrative.

The skeleton on which this ferocious indictment hangs is of course the murder and its solution, but even there James doesn’t go for anything like either a simple crime or a simple resolution, and lest we are so simple as to demand either James puts us--and Dalgliesh--firmly in our places by condemning our desire to know and understand the truth as “An arrogance and, perhaps, an impertinence.” The coda at the end deals fairly with all characters and even provides a sly note of hope for the survival of whom James undoubtedly regards as the fittest one of all. The Private Patient is a positively orchestral triumph, a literary symphony which lesser musicians, faint but pursuing, on their best days could never achieve, but to which they should always aspire.
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