From Publishers Weekly
Neither the mystery nor the detective present James's followers with anything truly new in her latest Adam Dalgliesh novel (after 2001's Death in Holy Orders), which opens, like other recent books in the series, with an extended portrayal of an aging institution whose survival is threatened by one person, who rapidly becomes the focus of resentment and hostility. Neville Dupayne, a trustee of the Dupayne Museum, a small, private institution devoted to England between the world wars, plans to veto its continuing operation. After many pages of background on the museum's employees, volunteers and others who would be affected by the trustee's unpopular decision, Neville meets his end in a manner paralleling a notorious historical murder exhibited in the museum's "Murder Room." MI5's interest in one of the people connected with the crime leads to Commander Dalgleish and his team taking on the case. While a romance develops between the commander, who's even more understated than usual, and Emma Lavenham, introduced in Death in Holy Orders, this subplot has minimal impact. A second murder raises the ante, but the whodunit aspect falls short of James's best work. Hopefully, this is an isolated lapse for an author who excels at characterization and basic human psychology.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
In the most recent installment in P.D. James's hugely popular series featuring Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard, a trustee of the quirky Dupayne Museum has been brutally murdered. Many of the large cast of characters might have done the deed, and, to complicate matters, James adds numerous subplots. It's all adroitly done and great fun--James at her best. Charles Keating is expert with both the narration and the wide range of characters. He is particularly talented at creating accents and speech patterns that illuminate personalities. While he is generally better with male voices than female ones, that is true for many male narrators and isn't a serious quibble. An utterly involving listen. R.E.K. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
After 16 novels, James is still able to find insular communities of professionals in which to set her crimes. This time it's the staff of a quirky museum devoted to England between the wars. The piece de resistance of the museum's collection is the Murder Room, in which are gathered artifacts from famous homicides that took place during the interwar years. Naturally, the room plays a crucial role, both as setting and as backstory, when real-life murder comes to the museum. It starts not in the Murder Room but in a garage, where one member of the family-owned museum is incinerated after being doused with petrol. That the victim was lobbying to sell the museum, over the objections of his sister and brother, only adds fuel to a fire that Scotland Yard Commander Adam Dalgleish is asked to extinguish. As always, James delves deeply into the psyches of her characters--in this case, the museum's staff--uncovering not just motives and secrets, the stuff of any crime plot, but also the flesh and bone of personality. Her novels follow a formula in terms of the action and the setting, but her people rise above that pattern, their complexity giving muscle and sinew to the bare skeleton of the classical detective story. And none so much as Dalgleish himself, who now must contend with tremors of "precarious joy" as his feelings for Emma, a Cambridge professor he met in Holy Orders (2001), force a life-changing decision. James, at 83, has mastered the trick of repeating herself in ever-fascinating new ways. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“The Murder Room is James’s most suspenseful, atmospheric novel in years and has no shortage of surprise twists.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Another elegant tale of murder, mystery, human misery and the wonder of loveÉ. James explores the lowest of depravity . . . with the most elegant prose.” --USA Today

“Riveting . . . exquisite, absorbing. . . . The Murder Room possesses everything we desire, no, long for, from James.” --The Miami Herald

"Elegantly constructed, beautifully written . . . [The Murder Room] is cause for rejoicing. . . . [It] is that much-sought-after but rare combination of reading that both transports the reader to another world and engages the imagination." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Difficult--and delightful--as it is to believe, P. D. James keeps getting better. . . . The Murder Room might be the best mystery novel of 2003. . . . This is a book to savor . . . with writing so felicitous the reader doesn't want it to end.” --Indianapolis Star

“Riveting. . . . The Murder Room possesses everything we desire from James. . . . [Her] lovely, clear prose travels at a stately pace, never cluttered by random violence or unnecessary characters, taking us where we need to be with assurance, intelligence and grace. No word or action is wasted; everyone and everything matters.” --The Chicago Tribune

“Ms. James skill is impressively displayed.” --The New York Times

“P.D. James is surely one of the best living writers of English. [The Murder Room]’s typical James–wonderful English settings, fine writing, psychological depth.” --Rocky Mountain News

“Any ranking of today’s best crime writers would surely put Britain’s P.D. James at or near the top. This subtly told, character-driven novel, which emphasizes people over plot, provides, as usual, a richly-rewarding reading experience.” --The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Immensely satisfying, with James introducing her large cast and its secrets with consummate skill.” --The Washington Post

“Carefully crafted . . . [with] richly portrayed characters. . . . P. D. James can still spin an intricate web of psychological suspense that demands the reader's attention and involvement. . . . James tells this tale in lucid language, with a wry eye on people and their faults.” --San Antonio Express-News

“Elegant . . . smooth storytelling. . . . The culprit remains convincingly elusive until the end.” --Houston Chronicle

“A perfectly cozy read for a cold, foggy night when you feel like curling up with a cup of tea.” --Entertainment Weekly

“Sophisticated literary entertainment. . . . Masterful detailing of people and place. . . . Acute psychological portraits. . . . [A] carefully crafted tale.” --The Orlando Sentinel

“Literate prose, sprinkled with enough deliciously British details to satisfy even the most diehard Anglophile. . . . [James is] an enormously appealing novelist.” --The Boston Globe

“Expertly plotted and elegantly written, the novel will stand with the best of her always-fine work. And as usual with a James novel, the characters are drawn with care and sympathy.” --The Richmond Times-Dispatch

“James whips up a thought-provoking, finely crafted literary murder mystery. . . . The Murder Room is a riveting and well-constructed read.” --San Jose Mercury News

“Elegant language and deft, intricate characterizations.” --Pittsburg Tribune-Review

“James writes of the whydunit rather than the whodunit and her grasp and appreciation for the boundless perplexities of human behavior deeply enriches her books.” --Philadelphia Inquirer

“The eminence grise of British detective fiction, James delivers another ruminative puzzler, generous in character, graceful in prose.” --The Village Voice

“James' strength as a writer lies in her ability to craft characters with depth. She doesn't just supply names and ages but gives readers a sense of her characters' desires and motives (and not just murderous ones).” --Fort Worth Star-Telegram


Review
?[A] superbly realized setting. ? The plot unfolds at its Jamesian leisure; the rich, almost posh quality of its slow unveiling allows for sharp sketches of character and place?. [James] ought never to be confused with such practitioners of the murder-in-the-vicarage genre as Agatha Christie. She is subtler, more sophisticated, much more adept at creating character, and her social conservatism gives her a much darker view of human nature.?
?Martin Levin, The Globe and Mail

?[T]he premise is delicious.?
?Telegraph (UK)

?The Murder Room is a brilliantly crafted novel, brimming with detail and rich in suspense; a further testament to James?s skills in both.?
?Waterstone?s Books Quarterly (UK)

?If crime fiction were classical music, P. D. James?s books would be filed under Grand Opera. In a sense, James is the last of the great Golden Age crime writers. She has an instinctive grasp of narrative: despite the leisurely prose, the shocks are beautifully handled. The plot purrs along like a well-designed and well-maintained engine. James writes with rare authority about the civil service, the police and the justice system. She also does an exceptionally good corpse ? she never cheapens the physical appearance of death, but describes it with both respect and clinical attention to detail.?
?The Independent (UK)

?James?s eye for architecture and nature is rare in most genres of the novel now, and this skill for physical description -- along with her psychological acuity.?
?The Guardian (UK)

Praise for Death in Holy Orders, The National Bestseller
?Baroness James of Holland Park has lost none of her power as a storyteller. Death in Holy Orders is a great novel about Heaven, Hell, death and judgment.?
?The Globe and Mail

?James is a delight to read, a writer in love with the language as much as her characters and her detailed plots.? This is an exquisite book, perfect in its details.?
?Winnipeg Free Press

?P. D. James?s latest mystery novel, Death in Holy Orders, reconfirms her place high in the panoply of contemporary crime writers?. This is a book to be savoured.?
?National Post

?This is a grand, gothic novel of gut-wrenching suspense, satisfying at all levels. . . . Here is a novel which goes beyond mere enjoyment.?
?Frances Fyfield


From the Hardcover edition.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Known for her leisurely paced, thoughtful, and well-characterized novels, P. D. James has risen to the top tier of British mystery writers; and, even after 16 books, she continues to outdo herself. This time out, she offers a cleverly restrained, engaging plot that twists around a handful of unusual, memorable suspects.

The Dupayne Museum, founded by Max Dupayne, is dedicated to the preservation of England's history between the world wars. As the museum's trustees, Max's three heirs -- Marcus, Neville, and Caroline -- debate the fate of the Dupayne. Brash psychiatrist Neville is determined to close it down, a position that is bitterly opposed by his two siblings. When Neville is found heinously murdered, Commander Adam Dalgliesh of the Special Investigation Squad is brought in to find the killer.

The "Murder Room" itself is an intriguing concept: an area of the museum where gruesome weapons and mementos from notorious homicides are displayed. Not only does the room become the setting for a crime; it also provides a resonant backdrop and metaphor for all that transpires in the book. James does a masterful job of contrasting the chilling relics of the past with the complex passions of victims and villains alike.

This is a riveting, first-rate novel so inventive and uniquely structured that it's impossible not to be completely drawn in. With a sure hand, the author slowly unveils a captivating mystery involving real flesh-and-blood characters we can identify with. The Murder Room proves once more why P. D. James remains the grande dame of the crime field. Tom Piccirilli

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Commander Adam Dalgliesh, P. D. James’s formidable and fascinating detective, returns to find himself enmeshed in a terrifying story of passion and mystery -- and in love.
The Dupayne, a small private museum in London devoted to the interwar years 1919 -- 1939, is in turmoil. As its trustees argue over whether it should be closed, one of them is brutally and mysteriously murdered. Yet even as Commander Dalgliesh and his team proceed with their investigation, a second corpse is discovered. Someone in the Dupayne is prepared to kill and kill again. Still more sinister, the murders appear to echo the notorious crimes of the past featured in one of the museum’s galleries: the Murder Room.
The case is fraught with danger and complications from the outset, but for Dalgliesh the complications are unexpectedly profound. His new relationship with Emma Lavenham -- introduced in the last Dalgliesh novel, Death in Holy Orders -- is at a critical stage. Now, as he moves closer and closer to a solution to the puzzle, he finds himself driven further and further from commitment to the woman he loves.
The Murder Room is a powerful work of mystery and psychological intricacy from a master of the modern novel.

Author Biography: P. D. James is the author of 17 previous books, most of which have been filmed for television. Before her retirement in 1979, she served in the forensics and criminal justice departments of Great Britain’s Home Office, and she has been a magistrate and a governor of the BBC. The recipient of many prizes and honours, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. In 2000 she celebrated her 80th birthday and published her autobiography, Time to Be in Earnest.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Despite her elegiac frame of mind, Ms. James has not lost her taste for a good throttling. Nor has she ceased to remind readers of why her elaborate gamesmanship retains its value. "You should read detective fiction," someone in The Murder Room advises Commander Adam Dalgliesh, her much-admired detective. "Real-life murder today, apart from being commonplace and -- forgive me -- a little vulgar, is inhibiting of the imagination." — Janet Maslin

The Washington Post

[The] slow build-up is, however, immensely satisfying, with James introducing her large cast and its secrets with consummate skill. — Laura Lippman

NY Times Sunday Book Review

The Murder Room is James's most suspenseful, atmospheric novel in years and has no shortage of surprise twists. — Patricia T. O'Conner

Publishers Weekly

Neither the mystery nor the detective present James's followers with anything truly new in her latest Adam Dalgliesh novel (after 2001's Death in Holy Orders), which opens, like other recent books in the series, with an extended portrayal of an aging institution whose survival is threatened by one person, who rapidly becomes the focus of resentment and hostility. Neville Dupayne, a trustee of the Dupayne Museum, a small, private institution devoted to England between the world wars, plans to veto its continuing operation. After many pages of background on the museum's employees, volunteers and others who would be affected by the trustee's unpopular decision, Neville meets his end in a manner paralleling a notorious historical murder exhibited in the museum's "Murder Room." MI5's interest in one of the people connected with the crime leads to Commander Dalgleish and his team taking on the case. While a romance develops between the commander, who's even more understated than usual, and Emma Lavenham, introduced in Death in Holy Orders, this subplot has minimal impact. A second murder raises the ante, but the whodunit aspect falls short of James's best work. Hopefully, this is an isolated lapse for an author who excels at characterization and basic human psychology. (Nov. 18) Forecast: This BOMC main selection, with its 300,000 first printing, is likely to do as well as other recent titles in this sterling series, despite its weaknesses. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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