Talking About Detective Fiction

P. D. James

Des 2009 · Knopf Canada

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P. D. James examines the genre of detective fiction from top to bottom, beginning with the mystery plots at the hearts of such novels as Great Expectations and Jane Eyre, and bringing us firmly into the present with such writers as Amanda Cross and Henning Mankell. Along the way she writes about Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Josephine Tey, among many others. She traces the facts of their lives into and out of their work; clarifies their individual styles; and gives us indelible portraits of the characters they've created: from Sherlock Holmes, "the unchallenged Great Detective," to Sara Paretsky's spunky, sexually liberated female investigator, V. I. Warshawski. She compares British and American "Golden Age" mystery writing, including the groundbreaking work of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. She discusses detective fiction as social history; the stylistic components of the genre; her own process of writing; how critics have reacted over the years (Edmund Wilson hated it, W.H. Auden was "addicted"); and what she sees as a renewal of detective stories—and of the detective hero—in recent years. Here is the perfect marriage of writer and subject—essential reading for every lover of detective fiction.

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P. D. JAMES (1920-2014) published nineteen novels, two works of non-fiction, a memoir, and many distinguished essays. Most of her novels have been broadcast on television, and The Children of Men was the basis for an award-winning film. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts. Her commitment to public service included serving as a Governor of the BBC, on the Board of the British Council, and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She was an Honorary Bencher of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, and was elected President of the Society of Authors. She received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983, and was created a life peer in 1991 as Baroness James of Holland Park.