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Summary and Reviews of The Lighthouse by P.D. James

The Lighthouse by P.D. James

The Lighthouse

by P.D. James
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • First Published:
  • Nov 22, 2005, 352 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Oct 2006, 352 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

The Lighthouse displays all the qualities that lovers of P. D. James’s novels the world over have come to expect: sensitive characterization, an exciting and superbly structured plot and vivid evocation of place.

Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is violated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered.

Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called in to solve the mystery quickly and discreetly, but at a difficult time for him and his depleted team. Dalgliesh is uncertain about his future with Emma Lavenham, the woman he loves; Detective Inspector Kate Miskin has her own emotional problems; and the ambitious Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith is worried about working under Kate. Hardly has the team begun to unravel the complicated motives of the suspects than there is a second brutal killing, and the whole investigation is jeopardized when Dalgliesh is faced with a danger more insidious and as potentially fatal as murder.

Commander Adam Dalgliesh was not unused to being urgently summoned to non-scheduled meetings with unspecified people at inconvenient times, but usually with one purpose in common: he could be confident that somewhere there lay a dead body awaiting his attention. There were other urgent calls, other meetings, sometimes at the highest level. Dalgliesh, as a permanent ADC to the Commissioner, had a number of functions which, as they grew in number and importance, had become so ill-defined that most of his colleagues had given up trying to define them. But this meeting, called in Assistant Commissioner Harkness's office on the seventh floor of New Scotland Yard at ten-fifty-five on the morning of Saturday, 23 October, had, from his first entry into the room, the unmistakable presaging of murder. This had nothing to do with a certain serious tension on the ...

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Another stellar novel from P.D. James (85 years old when The Lighthouse was published in hardcover last year). Like all of her novels, The Lighthouse offers a solidly, well written story that sticks closely to her proven formula but rises above the crowd on the subtleties of motive and emotions that her characters display. A few reviewers imply that The Lighthouse is a little below her usual standard. Having said that, everything is relative - James's mediocre is still so far above the best that others turn out that it is one you won't want to miss, especially if you're a past fan of her Adam Dalgleish series; and especially as some reviewers speculate that this, the thirteenth in the series, will be the last that she will write. As Booklist so aptly puts it in its starred review, "Each new Dalgleish novel should be treated as a gift by mystery fans everywhere."..continued

Full Review (309 words)

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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Media Reviews

The New York Times - Janet Maslin
The Lighthouse is too rooted in genre conventions to count originality as its strong suit. But it has deviousness to burn, and it also offers other enticements. It's the kind of book that boasts a wryly humorous Scrabble scene, not to mention a Scrabble-lover's vocabulary: Ms. James makes ready use of words like abseil, belay, symphysis and meiosis. It's a book that serves up figurative red herring as well as melon balls in orange sauce. Not a menu goes unmentioned ... it is a sturdy installment in a well-honed series, which is a concept that even its characters understand.

The Daily Express
James has proven that she deserves her reputation as our leading 'literary' crime writer. The Lighthouse confirms that she is also the most enjoyable.

Times Literary Supplement
James's gifts animate and transform the armature into something exceptional. Her disciplined conventions, her observation of social and class niceties, renew the traditional Franco-British drama of domestic crime. She is a very superior writer of detection.

The Toronto Sun
With her trademark blend of subtle characterization, vivid sense of place and deceptively simple plot, James pulls off another triumph. A beautifully written page-turner from the queen of the genre.

The Globe & Mail
An elegant and perceptive writer - rich drifts of prose pile up on the page, descriptive passages are Dickensian in length, ornament and power.... James's many fans will relish The Lighthouse, for all its poise and narrative familiarity.

Booklist - Bill Ott
Starred Review. It's what happens between the lines that gives James' stories their punch.... Each new Dalgleish novel should be treated as a gift by mystery fans everywhere.

Kirkus Reviews
Although the story is briefer than James's recent double-deckers, readers will still revel in her matchless fullness of characterization. A stay on Combe Island really is tonic.

Publishers Weekly
The solution.... is less than fully satisfactory and also borrows elements from some of James's recent plots. Devotees more interested in her hero's personal growth than his deductive technique will find much to enjoy.

Reader Reviews

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Beyond the Book



"The greatest mystery of all is the human heart, and that is the mystery with which all good novelists are concerned."

Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park OBE, better known as P. D. James, was born in 1920.  Leaving school at 16 due to financial hardships at home, she took a variety of jobs before joining the National Health Service to support her family.  She moved to the Civil Service in 1968 and worked there until she retired to write full-time in 1979.  She wrote her first novel,Cover Her Face, the first in the Adam Dalgliesh series, on the train to and from work  It was published in 1962

For a more complete biography of P.D. James and more quotes, please see this ...

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Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Lighthouse, try these:

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    A captivating, beautiful, and stunningly accomplished debut novel that opens in 1918 Australia - the story of a lighthouse keeper and his wife who make one devastating choice that forever changes two worlds.

  • The Crossing Places jacket

    The Crossing Places

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    When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, quirky, tart-tongued archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives happily alone in Norfolk. But when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, and Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson calls Galloway for help, Ruth finds herself in completely new territory - and in serious danger.

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