At the age of thirty-eight, Phyllis Dorothy James White, National Health Service employee, reinvented herself as P.D. James, crime novelist. By the time she died in 2014 at the age of ninety-four, James had long since been informally christened England's Queen of Crime. Sixteen of James's twenty novels feature one of her beloved series detectives, Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard and private eye Cordelia Gray, while her stand-alone works include dystopian
The Children of Men (1992) and
Death Comes to Pemberley (2011), a sequel to Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice. James's careful mystery plotting has earned comparison with Golden Age British detective writers such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. At the same time, James's work is thoroughly modern, with realistic descriptions of police procedures and the echoing aftereffects of crime. This definitive companion to P. D. James includes over 800 encyclopedia-style entries on all her published writing, characters, settings, and themes, as well as a career chronology, a chronological and alphabetical listing of her works, and an exhaustive index, making it an invaluable resource for devoted fans and new readers alike.
About the AuthorLaurel A. Young is an English instructor at Saint Mary's School in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Series Editor
Elizabeth Foxwell, an Agatha Award winner, is managing editor of
Clues: A Journal of Detection.Reviews"recommended"-
Choice; "Fans and researchers of P. D. James' work will appreciate this recent addition to McFarland's encyclopedic companion series. The entries are written in a clear and objective style, and include references to quotations in specific prints of James' work. Anyone interested in exploring the range of James' authorship will appreciate this comprehensive companion book"-
ARBABook InformationISBN 9780786497911
Author Laurel A. YoungFormat Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint McFarland & Co IncPublisher McFarland & Co Inc
Weight(grams) 503g