The perfect crime

Press, 14 April 1984, Page 20

The perfect crime

The Skull Beneath the Skin. By P. D. James. Sphere, 1983. 372 pp. $6.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Ken Strongman) Cordelia Gray, P.D. James’ young, attractive, unlikely private investigator, attends that without-which-nothing of classical detective fiction, a country house party, to keep an eye on a typical fictional actress — mixed up, but basically vicious — whose life, not surprisingly, has been threatened. Just to make sure that the outside world has no chance of exerting its confusing influence, Ms James has placed the country house on an island in the Channel. These days, no-one else would have the flair to get away with this sort of thing, but she is good enough to do it. “The Skull Beneath the Skin” is not just a country house murder. This is no longer enough for Ms James. It combines something approaching perfection in the detective story with gothic melodramatics, imbued with elements of the old-fashioned psychological thriller and a touch of modern but nicely hidden lust. She really is extraordinarily impressive and is, simply, the best current writer

of detective fiction, at least in the English tradition. The characters in this book are not all exactly believable, but of course they do not have to be in this genre. There merely have to be credible within the conventions understood byreaders of crime fiction. As ever, Ms James’ characters are a brilliant miscellany, with something of the slightlv weird richness of some of Iris Murdoch’s fictional figures. Cordelia Gray, vulnerable but courageous, is just intelligent enough and has just enough resilience to cope with them. And as well as all this, the ending is cryptic and poses moral problems. In the constant battle of the sexes, it is indisputable that the female writers of “proper” detective fiction are innumerable clues ahead of the men. Why this should be, one would not have the temerity to speculate about. It could be something to do with fantasylives into which it would be best not to inquire. Anyway, the women are better than the men and P. D. James is the best of them all. It is not just that she is the new queen of crime, wearing the crown of Christie, Sayers, or Marsh; she is a head above her forebears and has forged her own crown.