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A Certain Justice (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries)
by P.D. James
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Ballantine Books (1998-10-31)
ISBN: 0345430573
EAN: 9780345430571
Dewey Decimal #: 823.914
Binding/Media: Mass Market Paperback - 448 pages
Release Date: 1998-10-31
SKU: 70910557
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Sold with pride. No writing, no highlighting. Copy in very good condition. Normal reading wear from previous reading.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
When a professionally revered and personally despised criminal lawyer is found murdered in her locked chambers, Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team face a classic conundrum and copious suspects. One of "Publishers Weekly" Best Books of 1997.
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Amazon.com Review
Although A Certain Justice begins with news of a murder, the victim isn't set to die for another four weeks. Publicly respected but privately loathed, Venetia Aldridge has far more enemies than a brilliant London criminal lawyer should--and at least one of them is determined to do her in. Venetia plies her superior trade in courts that harbor "the illusion that the passions of men were susceptible to order and control," but her past and private life are exceedingly unruly. Her married lover is intent on giving her up; her daughter loathes her; her fellow barristers are determined that she not become the next head of chambers. Even the cleaning women seems to have something on her. The outline alone of this complex novel would take pages (as would the eclectic inventory of players), but P. D. James makes us admire far more than her brilliantly developed plot. James in fact creates a crowded gallery of surprisingly decent suspects, along with one suitably vile creature--who happens to be Aldridge's last client. A superior murder mystery, A Certain Justice is also a gripping anatomy of wild justice. James's characters can be overcome by hate, but she is equally concerned with love's manifestations--human, divine, destructive, and healing.
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Customer Reviews
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Interesting, very complex, very British novel
Rating  (4)
Date: 2010-06-24
I'm perfectly aware that Baroness James is very highly thought of in both this country and the UK for the literary quality of her mystery novels featuring Commander Adam Dalgliesh, educated copper and published poet, but somehow I've just never been able to resonate with her style. I keep trying, though, hoping to find the facet of her books that will allow me entrée into her writing. This one is widely regarded by the reviewers as one of her best, and since the professional world of the law interests me, I gave it a try. The set-up is both straightforward and very complex. Victoria Aldredge, Q.C., is a very fine lawyer indeed; everyone will tell you so. As a person, however, she's often a pain in the ass. She doesn't much like men, she doesn't much care for her eighteen-year-old daughter, she's long since parted from her husband for whom she feels contempt, she often doesn't like the accused whom she defends so skillfully -- and in chambers, she tends to assume her own superiority in practically everything and doesn't really give a damn which of her colleagues' feathers she ruffles in the process. But she doesn't deserve to be murdered, especially with such lack of dignity. And there are lots and lots of suspects. The thing is, James leads us slowly and very thoroughly through the present lives and previous experiences of Miss Aldridge, her father, her mentor in the law as an adolescent, her fellow barristers and solicitors, the Head Clerk of chambers, the cleaners, her daughter, and her daughter's new fiancé -- who was her mother's most recent client and probably guilty of the murder he was charged with -- building up everyone's character in great detail, and all this takes up nearly the first third of the book before we ever meet Dalgliesh and his elite homicide team. This is not a method of recounting a murder mystery I've encountered before, and I don't really know if it's the author's usual method, but while it requires patience, it generally works. James certainly has an ear for dialogue and an eye for description, both indoors and out. There's a subsidiary killing later in the book which leads to a violent climax, though, and which seems a bit out of place compared to tone of the rest of the story. And that is immediately followed by a much quieter and more intellectual climax regarding the original murder. It's an interesting narrative stratagem. I'll be reading more of P. D. James.
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Great characters, but weak ending
Rating (4)
Date: 2009-12-10
The key to P.D. James is her profound psyhological insight into her characters. In this novel, you have the lawyer who puts her skills above all concern for the guilt or innocence of her clients and accumulates her personal enemies. The certain justice of the title probably refers principally to the romance that develops between her daughter and a probable murderer she defends successfully. But it refers to the animosity of several who have been affected by her skill in protecting the guilty as well as the innocent, resulting in a number of suspects when she's murdered.This is, as per usual, a great outing for the author and a treat for those who enjoy her style of mystery.`
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P.D. James always satisfies
Rating (4)
Date: 2009-09-23
As always, P.D.James and Adam Dalgliesh make for absorbing reading. I don't know how I missed this one, but I'm glad to catch up with it now.
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Very Good
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-01-18
0 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Read one PD James novel and you will see right away what separates the truly gifted writer from the merely entertaining. For me, mysteries are a good diversion from the cares of the day, so I tend to read a lot of them. Most are entertaining and written in workman-like prose. Some even have above-average plots that stick with me for a bit longer than it takes to read the book itself.
PD James, on the other hand, manages to entertain while also offering readers attention-getting prose that makes one really think about how the characters feel and how events in the plot might actually affect the lives of real people, with pasts and futures, families and friends, fears and longings. Take this passage, for example:
"I no longer believed in God...I just woke up one morning to the
same grief, the same dull, daily tasks, and knew with certainty
that God was dead. It was as if all my life I had been hearing
the beating of an unseen heart, which was now forever stilled."
You just don't get writing like that from the usual paperback thriller. And James also delivers on the plotting details and elements of time and place that mystery lovers expect from a good page-turner. Overall, this is an exceptional mystery, with James' signature detective, Adam Dalgliesh, in true and rare form. I highly recommend it.
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Better than most, but not the best Dalgliesh
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-11-28
I've read most of James' Dalgliesh mysteries and this was by far my least favorite. Which is not to say that it wasn't good - I have yet to read a P.D. James mystery that isn't engaging and well written. It's just to say that compared to her other mysteries, this one was lacking. It seemed like the main plot (the death of a criminal attorney) was lost in the subplot about the attorney's daughter. The denouement of the subplot was great, in my opinion (well-paced, exciting), but the denouement of the main plot seemed tacked on. The impression I have is that James wrote a draft of the book in which one character was the murderer but decided that was too facile or something, rewrote the ending and added scenes in the beginning and middle so that a different character was now the murderer. It feels like the daughter-sub-plot denouement was meant to be the end of the book and the resolution of the central murder feels tacked on. However, just because I was disappointed that it wasn't quite as complete and satisfying as the rest of the Dalgliesh series, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. If it were written by someone else, I would have given it 4 stars, but I know that James is capable of a more satisfying book.
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