History and Mystery Reads

RRating: 8/10

• Plot: At a nurses’ training school, a student dies horribly during a teaching demonstration, and a second death follows.
• Clues: Precise and medical; the method of the first death is ingenious and the institution’s routines matter.
• Reveal: Satisfying, with a motive rooted in a past the characters thought was buried.
• Science bonus: Both deaths turn on toxicology, including how a poison could be introduced into a feeding demonstration, and the investigation depends on hospital chemistry and procedure.

Nightingale House is a Victorian mansion used as the nurses’ training school for a provincial hospital. During a demonstration of intragastric feeding, a student nurse playing the patient is poisoned in front of her classmates and inspectors. Soon another student dies. Commander Adam Dalgliesh is sent from Scotland Yard.

This was the book in which P.D. James found her true form. Her experience as a hospital administrator gives the setting an authority few crime novels have: the hierarchies, rivalries and routines of nursing are described exactly. The claustrophobic house, with its dark corridors and cold rooms, becomes a character.

Dalgliesh emerges fully here, a reticent poet-policeman, intelligent and melancholy, who treats both suspects and the dead with gravity. James’s prose is dense and observant, and she gives her suspects real inner lives.

The method of the first murder is chilling and clever, and the investigation pays close attention to physical evidence. The resolution connects the crimes to history in a way that raises serious moral questions.

The book’s pace is slow, and some readers find James’s descriptions over-elaborate. The number of nurses and staff can be hard to keep straight.

The 8 reflects a strong, atmospheric and intelligent mystery that established James as a major writer. It won the CWA Silver Dagger and remains one of the best Dalgliesh novels.