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Indlæser... Mordsalen : kriminalromanaf P. D. James
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Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. Good plot and timing. Well-written. (2003)Another very good mystery as a killer is copying murders that are displayed in a unique museum. Neither the mystery nor the detective present James's followers with anything truly new in her latest Adam Dalgliesh novel (after 2001's Death in Holy Orders), which opens, like other recent books in the series, with an extended portrayal of an aging institution whose survival is threatened by one person, who rapidly becomes the focus of resentment and hostility. Neville Dupayne, a trustee of the Dupayne Museum, a small, private institution devoted to England between the world wars, plans to veto its continuing operation. After many pages of background on the museum's employees, volunteers and others who would be affected by the trustee's unpopular decision, Neville meets his end in a manner paralleling a notorious historical murder exhibited in the museum's "Murder Room." MI5's interest in one of the people connected with the crime leads to Commander Dalgleish and his team taking on the case. While a romance develops between the commander, who's even more understated than usual, and Emma Lavenham, introduced in Death in Holy Orders, this subplot has minimal impact. A second murder raises the ante, but the whodunit aspect falls short of James's best work. Hopefully, this is an isolated lapse for an author who excels at characterization and basic human psychology. This book took a long time to get to the first murder and didn’t really pick up steam until the second murder. Elements of the resolution felt a bit sensationalized or gratuitous, and there were a couple of coincidences that I didn’t quite buy (especially because one of them seemed to come completely out of left field). This is another book that I suspect I bought and ready very soon after its publication, which I see was twenty years ago. I was, after all, a great fan of P D James, and viewed her then as representing the more literary end of the crime fiction spectrum. Her prose is certainly very well crafted, but revisiting this book two decades later I found it heavier going than I had recalled. While James’s prose remains as lucid as ever, I was also far more sensitive to the air of petulance that underpinned so much of what she wrote. There is also a hardness, almost veering towards intolerance, about a lot of the attitudes underpinning the book. As always, her characters are slightly removed from reality, and in fact reminded me of some of the casts encountered in Iris Murdoch’s novels. As it happens. My mother know both of them, although my recollection is that she never, or at least seldom, met the two of them together: that would certainly have been an interesting gathering, and I would have liked to see how the two novelists interacted. Commander Adam Dalgleish was one of those giants of fiction who never seemed to age. He was still going strong in this novel, written in 2003, more than forty years after his debut in Cover Her Face in which he had already ascended to Detective Chief Inspector so must have been significantly more than ten years into his police career. Does that matter? Well obviously almost certainly not. Although it does mark James out as belonging to an older school of crime fiction that expected its readers to suspend disbelief. One of the appealing aspects of some of Adam Dalgleish’s more recent counterparts, such as Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch in Michael Connelly’s novels, or Sir Ian Rankin’s thrawn John Rebus, has been the way in which they have aged in real time, having to combat the challenges that ageing throws at them. Yet enough cavilling. The characters might be slightly odd, and the setting (a museum on Hampstead Heath focusing on the years between the two World Wars) rather bizarre, but the plot itself is sound. Although he may have been preserved in literary aspic, Dalgleish remains an empathetic character, and he seems more readily believable than many of the other characters. Inspector Kate Miskin is also a finely drawn and highly plausible character. I enjoyed returning to this novel, and may well revisit some more of P D James’s work soon. I do like P.D James's Dalgliesh novels, I truly do, but over 600 pages is a lot of re-reading. In the interest of having some room in the house not entirely stuffed with books, this one must go. Definitely a worthwhile read, I love Dalgliesh and his team, Kate especially is a joy. The writing evokes a sense of place which makes me wish I had more than a superficial acquaintance with London and its less tourist-frequented neighbourhoods.
The éminence grise of British detective fiction, James delivers another ruminative puzzler, generous in character, graceful in prose. James writes with such ease and juggles her plots and characters with such control that none of this gets out of hand. . . Alas, James's efforts to inject suspense into Dalgliesh's romantic life are less effective. . . There is no mistaking P. D. James's latest mystery for the work of a younger writer. . . Her characters are confused by euros and annoyed by mobile phones. . . Despite her elegiac frame of mind, Ms. James has not lost her taste for a good throttling. It's a general rule of fiction that authors are happiest creating characters closest to their own age. This is because all fiction is broadly autobiographical. Male novelists in their early 20s create wincingly convincing teenagers but - by their 60s - are sketching adolescents who are merely embarrassing sexual fantasies. As an octogenarian novelist, James is showing similar difficulties of characterisation. . . I've never really got Dalgleish. His combination of policing skill and artistic sensibility - he's an acclaimed poet - has always struck a false note for me, especially given that he's so emotionally constrained. . . In The Murder Room, even his detective skills are more assumed than demonstrated. Several people, Dalgleish included, comment on his ability to get people to tell him things. Yet in this book, you have no idea why. All he seems to do is enter a room, ask a question and the admissions come thick and fast. . . Once she does begin, though, she doesn't relent until the genuinely chilling climax. Patrician, eccentric, but still a delight. DistinktionerNotable Lists
Da en gammel ven overtaler politikommissær Dalgliesh til at besøge et lille privat museum i udkanten af Hampstead Heath drømmer han ikke om at han skal vende tilbage en uge efter, hvor en af museets bestyrelsesmedlemmer er blevet brutalt myrdet - og det er blot begyndelsen. Ingen biblioteksbeskrivelser fundet. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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