Review: 'Orders' of high magnitude from P.D. James

"Death in Holy Orders"
By P.D. James
Alfred A. Knopf
Mystery
416 pages

By L.D. Meagher
Special to CNN

(CNN) -- On the wind-scoured coast of East Anglia, isolation is as much a part of the landscape as the brittle cliffs of the headlands. It's the perfect place for a cloistered community of theological students. It's also the perfect place to hide secrets.

It's a terrible place to die.

P.D. James sends her poet/detective Adam Dalgliesh into this place of isolation to investigate a "Death in Holy Orders." The scene of the crime is St. Anselm's, a tiny college that trains priests for the Anglican High Church. The first question confronting Dalgliesh, however, is whether a crime has been committed at all.

One of the students -- known as ordinands -- dies on the beach below St. Anselm's. A fragile cliff collapses on his head. An inquest returns a verdict of accidental death. The young man's rich and powerful father isn't convinced. He demands Scotland Yard send someone to investigate.

For Dalgliesh, the trip to St Anselm's is steeped in nostalgia. He spent three youthful summers there.

No sooner does he arrive, however, than there's another death. And there's no question about this one. It's murder. A visiting Archdeacon is bludgeoned in the church. When Dalgliesh learns the Archdeacon was agitating to have St. Anselm's closed, his list of suspects includes virtually everyone at the college. He summons his team from London and digs into the mystery.

Parts to play

James lets the investigation unfold at a leisurely pace, allowing her to develop each of the characters in some detail. Each of the four priests, most of the ordinands, and the half dozen or so other residents of St. Anselm's all have a part to play in the investigation. So do Dalgliesh's associates - especially Kate Miskin, the only woman on his team.

The author has an unerring eye for detail, not only in her characters but also in her settings. The reader can all but feel the cheek-burning salt winds of the coast, hear the creaking of the ancient building that houses the college, smell the lingering scent of incense in the church.

"Any visitor to an historic county town or city," James writes, "quickly becomes aware in his or her peregrinations that the most attractive houses in the centre are invariably the offices of lawyers. Messrs. Stannard, Fox and Perronet were no exception. The firm was housed within walking distance of the cathedral in an elegant Georgian house separated from the pavement by a narrow band of cobbles. The gleaming front door with its lion's-head knocker, the glistening paintwork, the windows unsmudged by city grime, reflected the frail morning sunlight, and the immaculate net curtains all proclaimed the respectability, prosperity and exclusiveness of the firm."

The author devotes this much attention to detail for a single scene of nine pages, and a single location that appears only once in her narrative.

Tangled threads

The reader doesn't so much absorb the story as become immersed in it. As Dalgliesh pieces together the evidence, it slowly becomes clear that there are threads connecting the death of the ordinand with the death of the Archdeacon, and two other deaths that occur at the college.

But the threads are tangled. There's no straight line from cause to effect. Only as the last, crucial piece of information falls into place does Dalgliesh understand what has truly happened at, and to, St. Anselm's.

"Death in Holy Orders" is the 15th novel from Baroness James. It fully illuminates why she has gained a global reputation as a writer who devotes as much energy to the psychology of her characters as she does to the mechanics of their crimes. It's not a brisk read, nor even an easy one, but it is a compelling novel filled with richly imagined people, places and events. The story is more than a nifty puzzle with deftly executed twists of plot. It's an examination of evil committed in the name of virtue, and of arrogance bred by isolation.