Wed 12 May 2010
Reviewed by Marvin Lachman: P. D. JAMES – Devices and Desires.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
by Marvin Lachman
P. D. JAMES – Devices and Desires. Faber & Faber, UK, hardcover, 1989. Alfred A. Knopf, US, hardcover, 1990. Reprinted many times in softcover including Warner, 1992. Six-part TV miniseries, UK, Anglia-ITV, 04 January to 08 February 1991; repeated in the US on Mystery! (PBS, Fall 1991).
Vol. 13, No. 3, Summer 1992.
I read P. D. James’ Devices and Desires before watching it on Mystery! so the television adaptation would not influence my evaluation of the book. It’s good in each medium, though a bit confusing on the screen when one doesn’t have time to reflect on all the characters “thrown” at the viewer, almost at once.
I’ve never met a P. D. James book I didn’t like, and this is no exception. I think she deserves her enormous success because she plots well, creates characters who live, and often creates fine word pictures. For example, here she says that in detective work you get “a jumble of facts like an upturned waste paper basket.”
However, I believe that the success of the television adaptations of her Dalgliesh stories has had a negative effect on her work. She seems to be trying for dramatic effect. Thus, she actually reduces suspense by giving us a flash-forward which discloses who the victims of a serial killer will be.
For the second book in a row, she has an cnding which is very melodramatic. It may play well on the screen — but it is not especially fair play and based on clues. (As James has become successful, she has probably become “above” editing. Thus we get 1880 given as the year of Jack the Ripper, instead of 1888.)
May 12th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
I think Marv may have hit on some points why I stopped reading James over the last few years. She still writes well and plots well, but the books don’t seem as good as they once were.
I haven’t cared for the dramatizations since Roy Marsden left the role of Dalgliesh. Maybe it’s time to bring Cordelia Gray back.
May 12th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
David
I wondered if there’d be a nice segue between Marv’s comments and your own following the Peter Lovesey book that LJ reviewed not long ago.
Go to https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=2027#comments and scroll down to Number Four.
Looks like I was right!
— Steve
May 14th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
I’ve enjoyed James less and less over the last twenty years. It’s true about the repetition of the “cinematic” action endings, but there are other things I like less about how her writing has developed in this time.
Most of all, the books are just too long (usually 500 pages or thereabouts). Way too much time is spent on giving huge chunks of character background, rather than letting the characters reveal themselves to us through their actions and comments.
Nor are the characters distinctive. Mostly they are these very well-spoken (James characters tend to make long, perfectly grammatical speeches) professionals with various personal problems to tag them with, often a dead spouse or a disease (in one book, it’s Alzheimers, in another AIDS, etc.). They aren’t really distinctive characters, in the sense that they really “live” in one’s memory–at least not in mine!
James is a good formal writer, but that formal eloquence can be offputting. In one novel she writes about a teenage street waif (a token lower class person) having a ring piercing her “umbilicus.” Now, if she didn’t want to say bellybutton (simply too vulgar, my dear), couldn’t she have just said navel? Who the heck says umbilicus?
It’s pretty clear too James has lost interest in intricate clueing as well. It’s been ages since one of her books had a really interesting, well-clued puzzle. This would be okay if her books were fascinating novels with intriguing characters, but I don’t find them such (though evidently some people do).
Also, there’s been a strong saminess to her plots in her many of her later books that I have found tedious.
Original Sin: Characters fight over fate of family publishing firm located in old building
Death in Holy Orders: Character fight over fate of religious school located in old building
The Murder Room: Characters fight over fate of family-owned museum located in old building
The Lighthouse: Characters fight over fate of island with old building located on it
I just got a copy of her latest, The Private Patient, haven’t read yet though. But it’s about a clinic in an old building. Will the characters fight over its fate?
May 14th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
I have a confession to make. I first read P. D. James mysteries back in the mid-1960s, probably the first three, and those were the last three I tried.
I keep meaning to give both her and Dalgleish another try, but it never happened.
I think I was seeing, even early on, all of the faults that Curt, you’ve seen in her later books.
As for what she’s writing now, I don’t think detective novels can afford to be 500 pages long, not and have the emphasis where I’d rather have it, on the detection.
Of course where I’d rather have it and the kind of books that sell well are two different matters.
I’ll give her another try someday, though I’d have to admit that it probably won’t be soon. And all in all, I suspect that it’ll be one of her earlier ones, just for starters.