Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990 TAG: 9107060045
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: reviewed by Sharyn McCrumb
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Write your best novels first. It will confuse critics no end.
For 20 years, P.D. James has been turning out beautifully written suspense novels about a poet-policeman investigating murders. `Innocent Blood` was a milestone in mystery fiction. A murder mystery without a murder, the novel is often cited as an example of the heights of the genre.
Now after many mid-list mysteries, seldom read by mainstream audiences, P.D. James has been "discovered` to the tune of a 175,000-print run, and a major author tour.
Suddenly people who think that Spillane is a synonym for mystery have decidedthat it's okay to read P.D. James, and she has been placed on coffee tables throughout the country, beside the chablis and the Sharper Image catalogue.
If these new admirers actually read `Devices and Desires,` they may wonder why the rest of us have been praising P.D. James for years. Because this book isone of her rare misses. It isn't very good.
Commander Adam Dalgliesh inherits a converted windmill on the Norfolk headland, and he takes leave of his duties at Scotland Yard to inspect the property. He can escape from London, but not from murder: A psychopathic killer has been strangling women in that remote coastal region. Adding to the bleaknessof the killings and Dalgliesh's personal loss, the Larksoken Nuclear Power Station looms ominously on the headland.
It sounds like promising material, but James drops the psychopathic killer storyline in mid-novel, and leaves the fates of several key characters unresolved. Worst of all, the ending introduces a new and completely irrelevant element into the plot, making a muddle of the last half of the novel. It's an awkward jumble, sadly at variance with the author's classic novels, `The Black Tower` and `Death of an Expert Witness.'
But because James is so well-regarded in literary circles, there is some hesitance about criticizing her work. One reviewer wondered whether she, and notthe novel, were at fault.
The reviewer hazarded a guess as to what the sloppy ending and the curtailed original plot could mean in terms of symbolism. Could it mean that there are no pat answers in today's world, she wondered.
Maybe, but I suspect it simply means that this time out, Homer nodded.
\ Sharyn McCrumb's new novel is 'If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O'
by CNB