The Murder Room - Adam Dalgliesh, Bk 12 Author:P. D. James The Dupayne, a small private museum on the edge of London's Hampstead Heath devoted to the interwar years 1919-39, is in turmoil. The trustees -- the three children of the museum founder, old Max Dupayne -- are bitterly at odds over whether it should be closed. Then one of them is brutally murdered, and what seemed to be no more than a famil... more »y dispute erupts into horror. For even as Commander Adam Dalgiesh and his team investigate the first killing, a second corpse is discovered. Clearly, someone at the Dupayne is prepared to kill, and kill again.
The case is fraught with danger and complexity from the outset, not least because of the range of possible suspects -- and victims. And still more sinister, the murders appear to echo the notorious crimes of the past featured in one of the museum's most popular galleries, the Murder Room.
For Dalgiesh, P.D. James's formidable detective, the search for the murderer poses an unexpected complication. After years of bachelorhood, he has embarked on a promising new relationship with Emma Lavenham -- first introduced in Death in Holy Orders -- which is at a critical stage. Yet his struggle to solve the Dupayne murders faces him with a frustrating dilemma: each new development distances him further from commitment to the woman he loves.
The Murder Room is a story dark with the passions that lie at the heart of crime, a masterful work of psychological intricacy. It proves yet again that P.D. James fully deserves her place among the best of modern novelists.« less
Once I got into this one, I couldn't stop and was very very late meeting my boyfriend. The best of hers that I've read, absorbing and teasing at the same time.
OurMissBooks - reviewed The Murder Room (Adam Dalgliesh, Bk 12) on
P.D. James is one of my favorite mystery authors and Adam Dalgliesh is an excellent detective. I've never been to England but love stories that take place there, so that's part of the appeal for me. The characters are well drawn and interesting, and the mystery compelling until the end. (I rarely guess whodunnit!) I recommend it.
Another masterful work of psychologial intricacy by P.D. James. Adam Dalglish is in the throes of making a decision about his love life and at the same time is searching for a murderer who has committed two murders in the Dupayne Museum and is destined to kill again.
Very good murder mystery set in and around London in a museum for the years of 1919-1939. The Murder Room refers to murders that happened in London during those years. Very well written.
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.
A murder mystery set in England. This national bestseller is a "murder she wrote" kind of book involving a museum, a dysfunctional family and a set of wacky museum workers. Two bodies show up early on mimicking historical murders portrayed in the museum's "murder room." A third attempt is made. You will not guess whodunnit.
When someone says 'murder mystery' to me, this is pretty much exactly what I think of. Very much within the classic tropes of the genre, but set in contemporary London, in this book James' police inspector, Dalgliesh, is assigned to investigate a murder that occured on the grounds of a small and obscure museum. The museum was in danger of closing - and the dead man was in favor of that closure, against his siblings' wishes. But did his siblings care strongly enough to kill him? Or was there another person with motivation - someone from the museum's small staff of odd and peculiar characters? Or someone from the deceased's private life as a psychologist?
When someone else turns up dead, things begin to seem more and more complex...
I thought the book was rather long, for its content, but reasonably well-done.
