Books - Shroud for a Nightingale (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series #4)

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Shroud for a Nightingale (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Series #4)

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Customer Reviews
Rating:

- Pleasant
A very pleasant mystery book to read. The story itself is not out of the ordinary, but keeps you guessing until the end and I had fun turning the pages. I am reading the author's books in chronological order and can already see how her writing style and the complexity of the stories improve with each novel. This is a book for anyone who enjoys an English mystery novel.

Rating:

- Staged Murder
Adam Dalgliesh, P.D. James' signature detective, is a consummate sleuth, able to use his intelligence to solve the most puzzling of crimes. "Shroud For a Nightingale", only the fourth bok to have featured Dalgliesh, is a bit dated, but it offers a case that Dalgliesh is able to solve but may find impossible to prove. It is a classic closed-scene murder mystery, with the few suspects living together in a place where privacy is closely guarded.

Nightingale House, an old mansion, is in use at John Carpendar Hospital as the dormitory of nurses in training and the Sister nurses in charge of them. On the morning of a General Nursing Council inspection, a student demonstration goes horribly wrong; while demonstrating how to do intragastric feeding on one of their fellow nurses, the students and observers watch as the young nurse screams in agony, poisoned to death. Was it an accident or murder? That answer is surely cleared up when another young nurse is found dead in her bed, a possible suicide, but Dalgliesh is called in, and he knows for certain that these two murders are connected. And that quite possibly, the mystery surrounding Nightingale House goes further back than these two murders.

P.D. James has crafted an ingenious mystery in this fourth novel, although it has some similarities to a later Dalgliesh mystery, "Original Sin". The first murder is almost too gruesomely described, setting the stage for the twists and turns that follow. "Shroud For a Nightingale" is a fast-paced mystery, but shows signs of being dated in its precise descriptions of nursing uniforms and medical jargon. The fact that Adam Dalgliesh is not quite yet fully formed as a character is evident, and he makes a fitting comment about fictional detectives, yet it is still a trademark enjoyable P.D. James.

Rating:

- Another Great Whodunit
Once again PD James proves why she's one of the reigning queens of the classic mystery novel. They're fiercely intelligent, witty, and intricately plotted,not like so many of today's recent entries which mostly involve serial killers with a vendetta. Here, Dangliesh is called to a hospital where two nurses have been murdered,or was it suicide?

Rating:

- Aren't Hospitals Unpleasant Enough?
I discovered Ms. James with "A Certain Justice" and have set my task to reading her entire oeuvre. In Shroud she first exhibits her wonderful gift for portraying big egos, a gift that made "A Certain Justice" such a fun read. In this case, the egos are embodied in a surgeon and supervising nurses. Apparently the British nursing profession in the day had a very strict hierarchy--strange to this American reviewer who is used to encountering nurses dressed in pyjamas who are the very soul of casual. Dalgliesh has a healthy ego himself, deservedly so, and is often at war with himself to control it, which makes for excellent interactions that are handled with the skill that make these mysteries so enjoyable.

In short, nurses start ending up dead and Inspector Dalgliesh must come and sort out the mess. The resolution is appropriately cerebral and satisfying. As murder is effectively the work of a person willing to let their own ego control the lives of others, the device of writing big egos into the story makes an excellent background for such a mystery. It takes smarts to commit a crime worthy of Dalgliesh--a fact that is surprisingly lost on many crime authors who run their characters through disappointingly banal events.

This fourth book in the series represents a big leap forward--easily as good as the first and much better than the second and third. It is representative work from author now confident of her superior abilities and who is willing to exercise the effort to craft an intelligent and intricate mystery.

Rating:

- A cunningly written novel
This novel from the first writing era of James is a masterpiece itself. It starts quite straightforward with two deaths and continues with unceasing suspense. The writer places Dalgliesh very well among the numerous characters of the story, trying to reveal all of their secrets. Interesting substories are being uncoiled as the reader moves forward. The pages whisk fast. You can never be sure about the killer or the motives underneath. Until the very end, the killer is being skillfully hidden by James. One could say that finishing the book lets the reader think about how far human relationships can go.

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