The closed-circle Agatha Christieian detective story has rather fallen out of fashion in favour of the ‘crime novel’, the essential difference being that while every detective story is a crime novel the reverse is not necessarily the case. As the doyenne of the detective story P. D. James rarely strays far from home and The Lighthouse represents the form at its purest. First, we need the right, closed setting. It used to be a remote country house which a snowfall has cut off from the outside world, isolating the dozen people suspected of murdering the colonel. P. D. James has gone one better and invented her own island, Combe, off the Cornish coast, a windswept fortress to which Significant People needing privacy in secure surroundings go for a period of rest and re-charging. It is owned by a trust and consists of a main house to which guests may repair for dinner every evening, a stable block and some scattered cottages. There is also a lighthouse. Combe has steep cliffs with jagged rocks below onto which mighty waves crash, silence apart from the seagulls, and from time to time a dense, enshrouding fog. What more can life hold?
The victim has to be disliked by all and hated enough to be murdered by just the one. Nathan Oliver, a rich and obnoxious writer, fits the role nicely. His only daughter and her boyfriend look after him. Oliver was born on Combe, which gives him the right to return occasionally, when he antagonises all the staff and most visitors. We are glad when he is found swinging from a rope in the lighthouse. But he has muttered recently about being weary of life and at first it is assumed he has committed suicide. Not for long though.
Enter Adam Dalgliesh and his team. Ah, Adam Dalgliesh. Who else to send for when the murder is a sensitive one and the words ‘security’ and ‘publicity’ are on Whitehall’s lips? The helicopter whirrs them to Combe and they begin interviewing the suspects — even young Millie who helps with the linen, and the nice cook. But perhaps none is more suspect than Yelland, head of a research laboratory which uses animals. He and Nathan Oliver quarrelled loudly about that emotive subject at dinner the night before the murder. But Oliver’s daughter didn’t like her father as much as she pretended, nor did the fiancé forbidden to marry her. Is an alcoholic former priest, brought to Combe to live quietly doing the accounts a suspect, or the widowed solicitor who could not cope with life after his wife died, or Combe’s GP who once accidentally killed a child; and what about the old lady who lives in the cottage Oliver wanted? He made things quite unpleasant for her.
The trouble with this sort of classic detective story used to be that the plot was watertight but the characters were cardboard and the prose bland. But P. D. James is a real writer and a highly intelligent one. Her characters are varied, multi-faceted and wholly credible and she is demonstrably interested in everything, including what makes the modern world tick. The Lighthouse is the Baroness on top form and you will love it.
I guessed the identity of the murderer early on. I was wrong. I also guessed that no good was going to come out of Adam Dalgliesh’s tormented love life. Wrong again.
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