Rating: 
Summary: Chilling Read
Review: I was not able to put "Shroud for a Nightingale" down. I have ready many of PD James' books. This one tops my list. Her character portraits are superb and so is the action. The cast of characters are diverse. The setting sinister. I'd call this a must read!
Rating:
Summary: A tour de force -- James's best work
Review: P.D. James's best work features a riveting mystery, believable, sympathetic characters, and an evocative setting. It's also a fascinating view into a world of enforced female submission which for the most part no longer exists, thank goodness.
Rating: 
Summary: The Best of James, The Worst of James
Review: Shroud for a Nightingale is a fair book. If you take into account that it was written early in James' career, you might judge it less harshly as it seems she has learned from her mistakes.
What mistakes? James relies too much in giving her suspects prescience in anticipating Chief Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh's next question. All too frequently his interrogations are punctuated with lines like "as if reading Dalgliesh's mind, Nurse Dakers said..." or "Sister Rolfe said ... as if Dalgliesh had spoken his thoughts aloud." Once or twice would be one thing, or at least allowing Dalgliesh to keep mum to prompt the suspect to fill the awkward silence with an unintended comment, but the frequency of the "psychic" segue makes it feel like sloppy writing. Another thing James does several times is have Dalgliesh run an unspecified deduction by his sergeant to which the sergeant graciously allows that "it might've happened that way." Again, it's sloppy and perhaps even out and out cheating.
Despite these rather appalling weaknesses, James' writing at times is as strong as in her more recent masterpieces. Sergeant Masterson's interrogation a la sadistic tango is wonderful, as is Dalgliesh's attempt to interrogate the housekeeper, Martha Collins. Her pacing is spot on in both cases and in the latter case, her ear for dialect - and ability to transcribe it intelligibly - is amazing. The spooky setting and overall mood of Nightingale house, while perhaps clichéd at times (the wandering ghost, the eerie happenings in the conservatory), is nevertheless effective. James provides perhaps too many suspects, but their varied motives and concomitant red herrings give the book a rich and robust texture.
As much as I appreciated having Dalgliesh avoid the potentially trite and clichéd path at the end of the book, I'm really not satisfied with the way James wrapped up the mystery. Without spoiling the ending, let me say that while it certainly "could" have happened that way, I would have liked to see Dalgliesh find some way to resolve things differently.
Despite some significant flaws, Shroud for a Nightingale, remains a well plotted and decently constructed mystery. As a piece of fiction that presents its hero as a work in progress, the book is highly enjoyable, though not entirely satisfying.
Rating:
Summary: Keeps you guessing
Review: Shroud for a Nightingale is a well-written, well-plotted mystery that will keep you guessing. A young student nurse dies during a training exercise, another is found dead in her bed. The first could have been the result of a practical joke gone bad, the second, a suicide. Or they both could be murder. P.D. James will keep you guessing until the end as to the truth about these deaths and the truth about the nurses, the doctors, the instructors at this very deadly hospital.
Rating:
Summary: Keeps you guessing
Review: Shroud for a Nightingale is a well-written, well-plotted mystery that will keep you guessing. A young student nurse dies during a training exercise, another is found dead in her bed. The first could have been the result of a practical joke gone bad, the second, a suicide. Or they both could be murder. P.D. James will keep you guessing until the end as to the truth about these deaths and the truth about the nurses, the doctors, the instructors at this very deadly hospital.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not her best
Review: This is an interesting work, though not one of James' best (I recommend "The Black Tower" or "The Skull Beneath the Skin" for that). The setting was great, a spooky Victorian mansion converted into a nursing school - this choice of location provided plenty of atmosphere and a restricted list of suspects. The plot was well constructed, with the clues spaced just right, although I feel that James did cheat in a couple places. I dislike her tactic of having a character ask a question of another character, then not letting us see the answer, in order to keep from us information that the protagonist now knows. She did that in at least one place here and I find it annoying. The loose ends are tied up neatly and there's a surpising and very well done epilogue. The characterization is where James falls down a bit. This is one of her early Dalgliesh books, and I think it shows, as most of the characters are more sketches than real persons. A big revelation about one character's past, near the end of the book, comes as something of a "so what?", since we don't really care about the character. Nurse Goodale was the only one I felt really stood out as a person. Even Dalgliesh seems to swing between supercilious and nasty, and he doesn't come off as a character a reader would care to spend more time with. These flaws aside, I'd glady recommend this to any fan of the series, although it's not a good introduction for a non-fan ("A Mind to Murder" is perhaps best for that). Not on par with her best, but pretty good overall.
Rating:
Summary: My cup of tea!
Review: This is my second P.D. James book. Loved it and could barely put it down. Interesting setting and good plot. Just enough detail about the medical profession in England. Watched for clues along the way, but was surprised by ending. I had picked someone else for the murderer altho I decided early on that the two murders were done by same person. This book has me hooked on Ms. James. Am planning to read the rest of her books as soon as I can.
Rating:
Summary: Terror at Nightingale House
Review: With her fourth Adam Dalgliesh novel, "Shroud for a Nightingale," P. D James ventured into new and dark territory, both in terms of the mystery and underlying themes. The first three novels in the Dalgliesh canon were, for the most part, traditional mystery novels with characters who you sensed were complex human beings, but who were never fleshed out entirely, as if to do so would be violating the "rules" of the detective story. With "Shroud for a Nightingale," however, P. D. James introduced us into the dark world of Nightingale House, where nurses, nursing students, physicians, and patients suddenly find a double murderer in their midst. This is the first of P. D. James's novels in which the characters' pasts are truly made to bear on the present. By the end of the novel, we are terrified at the bounds of loyalty and deception to which our fellow human beings are capable. The terror in "Shroud for a Nightingale" is there from the start, as the first victim-to-be meets a demise that, simply put, is worthy of a horror novel. Such horror, when expressed in James's elegant prose, becomes even more frightening.
|
