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Special Features : Regular Stores

• Jamie's Ministry of Food: Anyone Can Learn to Cook in 24 Hours

  Jamie Oliver

  
  
   

• The White Tiger

  Aravind Adiga

  
  
   

• Dear Fatty

  Dawn French

  
  
   

• Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities

  Nigella Lawson

  
  
   

• Brisingr (Inheritance Cycle)

  Christopher Paolini

  
  
   

• At My Mother's Knee ...: and Other Low Joints: And Other Low Joints

  Paul O'Grady

  
  
   

• The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

  Alice Schroeder

  
  
   

• The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (Definitions)

  John Boyne

  
  
   

• Guinness World Records 2009 (Guinness World)

  
  
   

• Azincourt

  Bernard Cornwell

  
  
   

• Look Who it Is!: My Story

  Alan Carr

  
  
   

• Stick Man

  Julia Donaldson

  
  
   

• Nation

  Terry Pratchett

  
  
   

• QI: Advanced Banter

  John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

  
  
   

• Bad Science

  Ben Goldacre

  
  
   

• The Mighty Book of Boosh

  Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding

  
  
   

• The Uncommon Reader

  Alan Bennett

  
  
   

• Bake

  Rachel Allen

  
  
   

• A Thousand Splendid Suns

  Khaled Hosseini

  
  
   

• The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery)

  P.D. James

  
  Given the astonishing length of the writing career of PD James (her first novel was published in 1962), it is perhaps not surprising that her work often consciously refers back to an earlier era of British crime writing -- but it's none-the worse for that. In fact, James' clever and affectionate reinventions of the devices and conventions of that era afford a particular pleasure -- as is the case with her latest, The Private Patient.

  Uncompromising investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn has booked herself into the Chandler Powell private clinic in Dorset. She has decided to remove a disfiguring facial scar, and is looking forward to what she hopes will be a new life after the surgery. But Rhoda will not leave the clinical alive - she is killed. After her murder, Commander Adam Dalgliesh is summoned to investigate. As he begins to examine suspects, scene and motives, a second death occurs, and Dalgliesh finds himself faced with one of the most complex and challenging mysteries of his career.

  In many ways, The Private Patient has the structure of a novel from the golden age of crime fiction, and James is well aware of the very best writing from that era (including Cyril Hare, who James succeeded as premier crime writer for her publisher, Faber). Needless to say, she freights in a very modern level of psychological investigation, more penetrating than that of her great predecessors. If the novel seems less initially engaging than other recent work by the author, there is perhaps a subtle agenda here: James is avoiding the more obvious reader-grabbing tactics to present a low-key investigation of character than she has chosen to deal with in recent books. If a little more patience is required than usual, the result of this understated approach pays dividends. And admirers of James (and her doughty detective Dalgliesh) will be prepared to be flexible for the pleasures of the cogently handled narrative here. --Barry Forshaw