For me reading is either a form of relaxation or a way of forcing myself to think about life. Sometimes life, the hard bits at least, gets in the way and I just want reading to be relaxing. This summer the hard bits of life got in the way so I'm not sure that last month's book Death in Holy Orders by PD James was, on reflection, the best choice for me. I have always found PD James quite difficult to read and even the television adaptations of her crime novels difficult to watch! The 'literaryness', if there is such a word, is a barrier. I get the impression she has laboured over each sentence. For example the first sentence of the final chapter of Death in Holy Orders reads ' Dalgliesh came to St Anselm's for the last time on a perfect day in mid-April in which sky, sea and the quickening earth conspired in a soft compliance of settled beauty.' I have the same problem with Colin Dexter's Morse books although on TV he is more palatable.
I want detective stories to be easy, something to polish off on an afternoon. With this in mind I thought about having one of Jonathan Gash' Lovejoy books as this month's Book Club choice. I haven't read one since they were adapted for television fifteen to twenty years ago. The re-run of Lovejoy on one of the digital channels has seen me eyeing some of our old paperback copies with relish. However, I have decided that since the hard bits of life are beginning to recede for a while that I would give P D James another chance. So this month's Book Club choice is Devices and Desires the writing of which was apparently inspired by 'the great stark outline of Sizewell nuclear power station'.
Death in Holy Orders and Devices and Desires both involve P D James' hero Commander Adam Dalgliesh a character I have absolutely no sympathy with but I am going to give him one last chance! Maybe East Anglia needs a new detective fiction hero balanced somewhere between Dalgliesh and Lovejoy? Literary but with a sense of humour.
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