Cover Her Face

By PD James

Group Comments/Reviews

So very English! So “of a time.” A pure detective novel. No action. People bumbling around, as the story progresses we learn more. Good mystery, good character sketching. Lots of good red herrings. Pretty good overall.

I had no idea when this took place–no sense of time but I enjoyed it a lot. More about the suspects and not about the detective. I really thought Sally was the perfect victim.

Hard to get a sense of place.

I felt as if I had just watched an old black and white movie.

I struggled with the sense of time. Made me feel it was written in the 1930s. Pace was quite slow, characters not terribly fleshed out. Dalgliesh was the least drawn character.

I am a huge P.D. James fan. Love Dalgliesh and the series, but when I went back and re-read this first in series I could understand people’s criticisms. But I do see the beginnings of character development for Dalgliesh. Clever, typical English female mystery writer.

Writing was pretty dated. Some oddness in the language. We had all the clues, I did like that and there was continuity in how it was presented. Slow at times.

We are getting the characters’ thoughts “in real time” and I like that. It takes a clever writer not to give things away when using that perspective. I liked the red herrings.

I really liked the set up. We got to see what everyone thought of the victim.

The most boring mystery writer. Incredibly boring book. All the characters are unpleasant. All the characters are bigoted and spend all their time gossiping. Did not feel like a mystery. Unbelievable that people would still be talking about the war like they did here, in the 1960s. The ending was ludicrous.

I’ve read this series and loved it. And the characters do evolve! Dalgliesh grows as a character. Sense of time was hard to find. Now, in re-reading, I find it dry and one dimensional.