Main Read January 2022: A Certain Justice, by P.D. James

[Bill]

First of James’s books I’ve read in several years. Love Inns of Court setting.

[Bill]

James was probably nourished by the Famous Trials series published by Penguin in the ‘60s.

[Chris]

Note to self - try and get round to reading all this series.

I liked it. A proper mystery beautifully set in surroundings so well-described you could see them in your minds-eye. The fact that the murder and the police don't turn up until a fair way in did not detract at all, and all the clues were there up-front too, not thrown in towards the end.
3/5

[Pat]

Christina, you'll never be disappointed in a book by P. D. James. She's been a favorite author of mine for many years. Enjoy!

[Bill]

About halfway. Started slowly but the list of possible suspects increases nicely.

[Bill]

It was truly a moving experience to return to the shrine. After enjoying the guilty pleasures of many 99p. specials, I found it so satisfying to read crime fiction of real excellence, with better and more believable characters than we find in most ‘literary’ fiction. In P. D. James’s stories I’m especially fond of the faint but firm undertone of real Anglican spirituality, and in A Certain Justice we also have an Anglo-Catholic priest and the sacrament of confession, but also a convent and a mother-superior. And like many Americans of taste, I also love the trappings of the English law courts, with barristers, especially Silks, in wigs and gowns and robed justices addressed as ‘m’lud’ as well as defendants in the dock. And we also have the Chambers at the Inns of Court, here the Middle Temple. Veneta Aldridge is an unlikeable but interesting QC who specialises in criminal defence, which makes her an ironic but appropriate victim.

I’ve not read all the Adam Dalgliesh (a name I never can spell without checking) series but find him a character whom I admire without really liking. (I never forgave Baroness James for dropping Cordelia Gray, though I’m aware it was the fault of the BBC.) My favourite of James’s books remains Innocent Blood, a heart-breaking story of how love and good intentions are insufficient without ingegrity. Like that book, though, A Certain Justice features characters obsessed with a quest for a kind of justice our world cannot provide. (The title is both revealing and ironic, as we find at the conclusion.) Still, I didn’t enjoy it as a mystery. I thought the author pulled too many characters and incidents ad lib out of the backstory. When the author conceals important facts till they finally emerge in the course of the investigation, the reader scarcely has a chance to sport the villain, though I give myself marks for spotting who didn’t do it. The plot also relies on at least one plan much too complicated to be believable in real life. So, I’ll hold my award at four stars. But for setting, style, and spiritual and moral values, A Certain Justice was most worthy of an author whose absence from the literary world is most to be regretted.

I'd be interested if others found this one a bit wanting as a pure mystery story.

[Pat]

PD James writes so well in comparison with most modern authors that it's difficult for me to criticize her work. I've read most of her books, if not all, and the progression of character's lives over the years has led me to accept that not all cases turn out to fit the dimensions of pure mystery. She makes amends for that with the humanity of her characterizations and reality of glimpses of British life. As an American, I read for those as much as the mystery format. For me, her books always rate a 5, even those which are less perfect than others. I always learn something from each book she produces.