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Summary: AT LAST.......
Review: Finally, the wonderful BBC dramatizations of the P.D. James mysteries broadcast on PBS Mystery Theater are being issued in a DVD format. SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE is one of the best. The setting for this mystery is a school in England located in an old 19th Century Victorian building situated on a large estate (thus the time-honored device of murder in the "country house" is preserved wherein all the suspects and victims are in residence). Florence Nightingale founded nursing in the U.K. during the Crimean War and for a long time afterward, those who became nurses were called "nightingales" after their famous role model. (Clara Barton was her equivalent in the U.S. during the Civil War.) In this mystery, the nightingales are student nurses and their instructors living in residence at a school of nursing. One morning, a student nurse is ingeniously done in before a dozen witnesses none of whom can identify the killer. Adam Dalgliesh, Scotland Yard's poetic police chief superintendent is soon on the scene. He finds plenty of suspects but before he can solve the first crime a beautiful red-headed instructor is found dead in her bed--of unnatural causes. She had been having an affair with someone as she was pregnant -- did her lover try to cover his tracks? Or maybe one of the other nurses was jealous of the beautiful young woman and killed her. When a third mysterious death takes place, hysteria reigns supreme. Dalgliesh stalks the killer and in the end nails his nemesis, but not before a very desperate person with a wicked, wicked past produces mayhem and a few murders.
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