Her final work, Death Comes to Pemberley (2011)-a sequel to Pride and Prejudice (1813)-amplifies the class and relationship tensions between Jane Austen’s characters by situating them in the midst of a murder investigation. James expanded beyond the mystery genre in The Children of Men (1992 film 2006), which explores a dystopian world in which the human race has become infertile. The first of these novels was the basis for both a television movie and a short-lived series. James also wrote An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972) and The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982), which centre on Cordelia Gray, a young private detective. James, who earned the sobriquet “Queen of Crime,” penned 14 Dalgliesh novels, with the last, The Private Patient, appearing in 2008. The public resonance created by James’s singular characterization and deployment of classic mystery devices led to most of the novels featuring Dalgliesh being filmed for television. The novels in which he appears are peopled by fully rounded characters, who are civilized, genteel, and motivated. Her first mystery novel, Cover Her Face (1962), introduced Dalgliesh and was followed by six more mysteries before she retired from government service in 1979 to devote full time to writing.ĭalgliesh, James’s master detective who rises from chief inspector in the first novel to chief superintendent and then to commander, is a serious, introspective person, moralistic yet realistic. To support her family (which included two children), she took work in hospital administration and, after her husband’s death in 1964, became a civil servant in the criminal section of the Department of Home Affairs. White, a medical student and future physician, who returned home from wartime service mentally deranged and spent much of the rest of his life in psychiatric hospitals. Her formal education, however, ended at age 16 because of lack of funds, and she was thereafter self-educated. The daughter of a middle-grade civil servant, James grew up in the university town of Cambridge. James, byname of Phyllis Dorothy James White, Baroness James of Holland Park, (born August 3, 1920, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England-died November 27, 2014, Oxford), British mystery novelist best known for her fictional detective Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard. As Mrs Maxie learns of her son's sudden engagement, the seemingly quiet Sally seems to be involved and by morning she is dead.

James centres around the lives of Mrs Maxie and her parlour maid, Sally Jupp.

Adam dalgliesh cover her face