PD James’ books had strong characters, avoided stereotypes and touched on distinctly contemporary problems including drugs, child abuse and nuclear contamination
Mystery writer PD James, who brought realistic modern characters to the classical British detective story, died at 94. James’ books, many featuring sensitive sleuth Adam Dalgliesh, sold millions around the world, and most were just as popular when adapted for television. Because of the quality and careful structure of her writing — and her elegant, intellectual detective Dalgliesh — she was at first seen as a natural successor to writers like Dorothy l Sayers, creator of lord Peter Wimsey.
But James’ books were strong on character, avoided stereotype and touched on distinctly modern problems including drugs, child abuse and nuclear contamination.
“The greatest mystery of all is the human heart,” James said in a 1997 interview, “and that is the mystery with which all good novelists, I think, are concerned. I am always interested in what makes people the sort of people they are.”
Although there was nothing remotely “genteel” about James’ writing, she was criticised by some younger writers of gritty urban crime novels. They accused her of snobbery because she said she liked to write about middle-class murderers, preferably intelligent and well-educated, who agonise over right and wrong and spend time planning and justifying their crimes. Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard, hero of more than a dozen of James’ novels, is a decidedly gentlemanly detective who writes poetry, loves jazz and drives a Jaguar.
James was born in Oxford in 1920. Her father was a tax collector and there was not enough money for her to go to college, a fact she always regretted. Even as a child, she said, she had been interested in death. As a little girl, when someone read Humpty Dumpty to her, she asked, “Did he fall or was he pushedIJ”
But she did not start producing her mysteries until she was nearly 40 and then wrote only early in the morning before going to the civil service job with which she supported her family. Her husband, Connor Bantry White, had returned from the war mentally broken and remained so until his death in 1964. “It was a late beginning for someone who knew from early childhood that she wanted to be a novelist and looking back, I can’t help regret what I now see as some wasted years,” James wrote in a 1999 autobiography, Time to Be Earnest.
Her first novel, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962 under her maiden name and was an immediate critical success but she continued to work in the Home Office until 1979. In 1980, with the publication of her eighth book, Innocent Blood, her small but loyal following exploded into mass, international popularity. “Monday, I was ticking along as usual, and by Friday I was a millionaire,” she once said.
Her work was not confined to the mystery genre. Her 1992 science fiction novel The Children of Men, about a dystopian future in which humanity has become infertile, was turned into a critically praised 2006 movie by Alfonso Cuaron. In 2013 she published Death Comes to Pemberley, introducing a murder mystery into Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
James was often spoken of as an heir to Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, icons of the classic British mystery but her admirers thought she transcended both. “Doyle and Christie are genre writers — clever, yes, but one must suspend considerable disbelief right from the get-go when reading their works,” said author Anita Shreve. “No such acrobatics are necessary with a James novel.”