Rating: 
Summary: Portraits connected by murder
Review: I have read every mystery by PD James and have come to the conclusion that her creative impulse stems from a need to create slice-of-life portraits. She delves into her main characters/suspects and reveals them (usually) as psychically wounded. As often she creates sketches of minor characters. For example, a very minor scene depicts in great detail the relationship between the two women working at a clothing resale shop .Their importance to the plot is based on their receiving a consignment that includes the purse of one of the victims, but the amount of time devoted to them goes well beyond their significance in terms of plot. I can only think that James is fascinated by people for their own sake, with the murder mystery serving as a pretext for her psyco-social portraits of people living/surviving in 21st century England.On the other hand, she is much more circumspect when it comes to the motivations of major characters. Without giving anything away, I will say that I found the behavior of the first (and primary)victim to be cryptic. At the end, the motives of the murderer are also rather vague and ultimately left to the reader's interpretation. Some people love Dame James' approach to mystery--there is a palpability to the surroundings, to people's living and work spaces. There is a depth to the suspects and the detectives. If you are intrigued by all this, you probably know who you are and will enjoy Murder Room. If, on the other hand, you have a fondness for the Agatha Christie -185- page- or- less-whodunnit that gets you in and gets you out, you'll probably find PD James plotting too slow. If you have never read PD James, I would say this is a typical one, no better and no worse, so a good one to try. Personally, I'll always read the latest novel by PD James. To me, a sub-par PD James is still better than 90 % of the mysteries being written today.
Rating: 
Summary: BORING
Review: I always finish a book and I tried very hard to stick with this one. But half way through it, I realized that I was wasting precious time so I gave up on it. There are just too many descriptive paragraphs that add nothing to the story or the characters. The characters are stuffy and even the ones you are supposed to like, come off as wooden. The writing style simply does not flow so I found myself re-reading. Don't waste your money or time with this one...
Rating:
Summary: Classic Whodunit
Review: Adam Dagliesh is back investigating deaths taking place at a small private museum devoted to the interwar year of 1919-1939. The museum is mostly known for its Murder Room. A room depicting notorious crimes of the era. The deaths being investigated are similar to those depicted in The Murder Room. Dagliesh must determine if these are merely copycat killings or if there is a darker more personal motive at play. James has populated THE MURDER ROOM with interesting and quirky characters. We have a trio of siblings who are at odds on whether to continue the museum when the lease is up. There is also the loyal secretary with no life outside her work, a lonely housekeeper who has taken a young troubled gay man under her wing, a curator with military ties and a volunteer who in her youth was a spy. Dagliesh's love life is also moving forward in this book even though not too many pages are devoted to it. It was nice to see his personal progession. P.D. James can be counted on to give you interesting characters and a superbly written intricate plot. She does not fail here. The one weakness in the book is that the action does not start until well after 100 pages.Quite frankly the set up was boring and my mind started wandering several times. Once the first killing takes place, the pace picks up considerably and the book then becomes a page-turner. I love the Adam Dagliesh series and while I do not consider this the best book of the series, I was not really disappointed. The last ¾ of the book made up for the rather slow start. Overall, it was a very enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: How did this get onto the campus bestseller list
Review: I found this book to be horrible. I'm and engineer, so I'm not out looking for any hidden symbolism or themes in a book, I just want a good mystery. But this book had plenty of underlying themes that just annoyed me to no end. First and foremost, the author seems to have a love of Jaguars which she can't contain. Its Jaguar Jaguar Jaguar for the entire book. Sure, I understand that it does relate to the story, but jeez, who cares that everyone drives a Jaguar. Oh, the detective never gets into his "car"... no no, he gets into his Jaguar... she is very careful to spell that out every time. People either drive Jaguars, BMWs, or Mercedes in this book, or if they are poor Ford Fiestas and bikes... Thats it. The endless references to Jaguar and how cool it is made me sick and bored. Also, I love how there was no middle class in this book, people were either rich and crusty or poor as dirt... super realistic. And I love the attention paid to the characters' residences, the way how social standing and proper decoration were always explained in great detail, while the terrible state of the poor residences were looked down on. The author came across as a total stuck up rich upper crust old lady. I mean, seriously, every description was about upholding one's social class or the terrible state that poor people live in (and I don't mean terrible like we should feel bad for them, but terrible in how embarrassed we should be for them)... I'm embarrassed for the author, she's just not in touch with those not in her "class" seemingly. Another strange thing about the book was how all the characters had seedy backgrounds, and were somehow all interlated through tawdry dealings. I mean, very poor character development. Every character had something to hide, every character had a dark past... Not realistic at all. And the whole Emma subplot was pointless. I would say this is the worst book I've ever read, not because of the actual plot or writing style, but because the views of the author come across in her writing, and her views are just snobby and old. Not being a Lord myself, this book just ticked me off about how closed minded some people are, and how material. Don't buy this book, the author will just get a new Jaguar with the profits...
Rating: 
Summary: A Ripe Roaring Yarn with no Lack of Suspects!
Review: The story set in a museum with no lack of suspects! The story is well designed to catch you, then keep your interest for the duration. She sets out all the characters, and boy are they characters! While the several of characters are very quirky and have serious personal issues, they are well developed and they all have obvious motives to do away with the victim. After having introduced the characters and set the stage, she springs an excellent yarn that challenges your deductive reasoning to its limits. There are lots of surprises and a few 'red herrings' along the way. Adam Dalgliesh does his detecting once again with a humanity not always seen in detective stories and with a personal relationship at stake. I strongly recommend this story to fans of P.D. James, as it is well done and the climax is unexpected, at least to me.
Rating:
Summary: Dum-de-dum-dum
Review: PD James elevates the whodonit to literary and psychological levels. My favorite of her many mysteries are those featuring Scotland Yard Commander Adam Dalgleish. James limits her cast of characters and the list of possible suspects by setting her crimes within circumscribed boundaries: the staff of a village church, the walls of a convent, the employees of a publishing house - this time it's within the wall of a museum devoted to British arcane of murders that took place during the years between the two World Wars.
Then a new, modern, and all to real murder occurs, and Dalgleish, with his own history and quirks, is called in one the case. The victim is the museum's owner, a man whose siblings objected to his desire to sell it. James creates characters that rise above the cardboard outlines of those in most mysteries; she adds sinew, flesh, and real live personas with souls to the bones.
And, a surprise twist, there's a love interest for Dalgleish himself in this book! Readers who have followed his career since he first appeared within the pages of PD James' books will feel compelled to read this one as a way of continuing their affair with the charming, tortured, and enigmatic detective.
Rating:
Summary: The Very Best!
Review: Except for a very few authors, I usually devour mysteries like popcorn. The "Murder Room" is above all a well-crafted novel and a procedural police mystery secondarily. I could not devour "The Murder Room" and found myself savoring P. D. James' written words, even to rereading some pages.
James' descriptions of places, people and logistics open the mind's eye. James brings readers to her level via her words rather than writing down to them. If the reader has a map of London and environs in hand while reading the accuracy is obvious. People descriptions are very revealing and I learned more of and felt more keenly about AD and his team then in previous books. The end of the novel is riveting and smashing.
I was disappointed with the basic premise upon which the crimes in the book were committed, although there were hints (clues) along the way. I only hope that James has more novels left in her!
Rating:
Summary: Running beautifully before the wind - PD James at work
Review: This is not only the latest P.D. James book, it is also her best work in some time. She has gone back to the core of her work, to murder and to Adam Dalgiesh, the Commander. He is still at Scotland Yard and the book is still about people that come into contact with a murder and how it affects them. In contrast to several other very good writers writing today about their continuing characters, Adam Dalgiesh shows no sign of becoming a private eye, and this is a very good thing for us. I think that what I really like about P.D James is her gift for expressing apparently intuitively an insight into the core her characters. She knows what makes these individuals run. They each react to the intrusion of a full scale police investigation in a believable fashion. These individual reactions of each of her characters are different, but they are so incredibly nuanced that they are seemingly real. It is as close as you can get to a fictional person. You feel that the author actually knows these characters as people, and what they think and how they feel, each of them. They are not stand ins for the author. I do not remember if she has been doing this for a while, but there were several words in this book that I admit that I had to mark to look up later. An example of this was the word "etiolated" at page 244. I had never seen the word before and had not an idea what it meant. Merriam-Webster OnLine says it means: "1 : to bleach and alter the natural development of (a green plant) by excluding sunlight; 2 a : to make pale b : to deprive of natural vigor : make feeble." That makes sense and given the context it was clear enough, but there were six or seven of these words that I finally had to look up one after the other - it was fun. But it is not for the words that I read P.D. James, nor even for the characters, how ever well and completely presented, rather it is for the writing, an example: "He was after all, a poet with a writer's interest in the fabric of other lives." at page 243. That is to me a beautiful sentence, and in context it is close to perfect. It expresses the poetic side of her major character poetically, and talks of the author as well. It is multifaceted. It is elegant. It is prose carried to the edge by an author in full command of her arsenal of words. But the book itself shows an author in full command of her story as well, and that is special too.
Rating:
Summary: Not James' best but nonetheless a rivetting read !
Review: There is no better murder mystery writer than P D James. She is without doubt the absolute best and the reigning queen in her given genre. There isn't a single James book I haven't read and not enjoyed. "The Murder Room (MR)" is no exception....so if I seem unduly critical of her latest, it's only because I've grown accustomed to her usual high standards and can't help but judge its merits against her very best works. Adam Dagliesh as romantic hero in MR may be poignant only to James' fans. Newcomers are likely to find Dagliesh's new guise oddly irrelevant. Colleague Inspector Kate Miskin shows her slightly bitter and cryptic side and though it's not always a pretty sight, it's a contemporary reminder that the effects of the English class system haven't completely worn off. The characters that populate MR are typically Jamesian, hard, cynical, and ruthless and there's none more unpleasant than Caroline Dupayne, one of the three trustees of the Dupayne Museum, whose fate depends on whether the trustees agree to carry on. That woman chills your blood and wilts your soul. There are also the usual damaged people who make excellent suspects (eg, Tally, Muriel), so once you've met them, you know you're in familiar territory. MR doesn't offer anything new but at 83, James shouldn't be expected to deliver anything groundbreaking. Though I enjoyed the book immensely - her writing is never less than sharp and exquisite - the plotting, I felt, was a little weak and ultimately unconvincing from the second murder onwards. There are too many red herrings in there, suggesting a lack of cogency in plot development. The identity of the murderer, when it is revealed, doesn't surprise though the motive isn't remotely commensurate with the violence and viciousness of the crime. Enough with the negative comments. There's always integrity and quality in James' work as she is never less than erudite in her research. Despite the above criticisms, MR still makes a rivetting read and you can do a lot worse than picking up a copy and finding out for yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: Not P. D. James at her best... nor at her worst
Review: The last two Adam Dagliesh novels have seen P. D. James close to the top of her form, but while this latest entrant in the series is not as distasteful as some of the worst books in it (such as A TASTE FOR DEATH), neither does it show her at her most cunning. The setting is somewhat typical for James: a Victorian house with interesting architecture converted into the Dupayne Museum, a small institution devoted to the cultural and social history of the Interwar period. The Dupayne heirs, a squabbling set of siblings (one of whom is of course soon murdered), also seem very much a typical bunch of Jamesian suspects. But the first one hundred pages setting the scene and introducing the characters is inordinately humdrum. We are told repeatedly how uninteresting the Dupayne is, and the characters all seem, like their creator, with a peculiarly circumspect and distanced vision of their lives and everyone else's: they all seem vaguely nihilistic and biding their time until the grave. Only when the first murder occurs do things perk up considerably in terms of interest, both for the Dupayne and the cast of characters, and then things do get humming and James seems to snap out of her writerly doldrum. The novel's other unhappy feature is its unconnected subplot involving the ever-distant Commander Dagliesh and his bloodless romance with the sickeningly perfect Emma Laversham, introduced in the previous (and far superior) Dagliesh mystery DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS. Why James wanted to continue with Emma's colorless character is a greater mystery than anything Dagliesh or his subordinates encounter in the novel itself.
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