THE LIGHTHOUSE

The Lighthouse, P D James, Alfred A Knopf, 2005, 383 pp

I read this for one of my reading groups. I think it is her second most recent book. That is more than 43 years of writing mysteries. So now I have read from both ends of her oeuvre. I don't totally get why people think she is so great. She certainly has the genre down perfectly, but I just didn't find The Lighthouse to be all that exciting. Of the female mystery writers, I still like Sara Paretsky best.

Adam Dalgliesh is the investigator and I understand that he figures in many of her books. Then there are his two assistants. Each has a personal life, which gets some pages, but mainly they are solving a murder which happened on a private island off the Cornwall coast. It is a writer who was killed and every person on the island is a suspect. She does keep you guessing but I didn't feel completely satisfied at the end. The actual murderer kind of comes out of the blue.

Basically I am not a mystery fan. That's all there is to it.