Product Description

St Cedd's Church fete had been held in the grounds of Martingale manor house for generations. As if organizing stalls, as well as presiding over luncheon, the bishop and the tea tent, were not enough for Mrs Maxie on that mellow July afternoon, she also had to contend with the news of her son's sudden engagement to her new parlour maid, the sly single mother, Sally Jupp. On the following morning Martingale and the whole village are shocked by the discovery of Sally Jupp's body. Investigating the violent death at the manor house, Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is embroiled in the complicated passions beneath the calm surface of English village life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14264 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 217 pages

Customer Reviews

Ponderous, pretentious, plodding...
...all too solemn and totally lacking in spark. At least it avoids the charge of being overlong, which is what most of her later novels are.

Not overly exciting
After all the praise P.D. James has received, I wanted to give her books a try. I began at the beginning with her first novel. Cover Her Face is a pretty good read, but lets through that it is an early work of the author. The story entails one crime only, the murder of the house-maid. No other cases or even significant side stories of the main characters are present. This makes the novel differ from many more recent mysteries. Fortunately, the ending is a surprise.
The book often describes events and actions instead of letting the reader actively live them through dialogue. As a result, I didn't really feel drawn into the story. We also don't learn very much about what type of person the main character, Inspector Dalgliesh, is. Not many clues are given as to his style of solving crimes or his personality in general. I am hopeful that I will get to know him better in the following books in the series.

Tension at Table
The distinguished Adam Dalgliesh stories begin with Cover Her Face. Few will find this their favorite book in the series. I decided to read Cover Her Face again to provide perspective on P.D. James's latest, The Lighthouse. From that retrospective look, I came away even more impressed with The Lighthouse.

But I do recommend that you read Cover Her Face. Although it isn't going to be a favorite of yours, it will be good reading.

The book's main weakness is that the detailed development of the place and characters doesn't quite have rich enough material to work with.

The plot itself has some marvelous twists and turns that build around the character of a most unusual murder victim, Sally Jupp, a marginally acceptable servant in a wealthy home. The other interesting aspect of the story relates to several interesting variations on the locked room mystery subgenre.

In later stories in the series, Baroness James let her imagination run freer . . . with superb results.