Crime P.D. James likes to set her crime novels in small, self-contained worlds. In the past, she's used a hospital, a publishing house and a monastery.
This time, it's the obscure and rarefied, family-owned Dupayne Museum on London's Hampstead Heath, which displays only objects from the inter-war period 1919-1939. Its chief attraction is the Murder Room of the book's title, which displays records and curiosities connected with infamous murders from that period.
The future of the museum is in doubt: the lease is due for renewal, but the museum can only continue if all three trustees, who are also Dupayne family members, sign it. There's dissention. When one of them subsequently dies on the premises in a copycat murder of one showcased in their own exhibits, enter Cdr Adam Dalgliesh, the detective-poet, and James's most popular and enduring detective.
This novel has all the James trademarks: intricate, carefully-laid plot; a cast of commoners and posh eccentrics (the British class system is alive and well in the world of her novels); intriguing asides; stray leads and twists that come from nowhere. But The Murder Room, good read as it is, does not rank as one of her best novels, such as Original Sin, and her last, Death in Holy Orders.
The main reason for this is the fact that the major character, Dalgliesh himself, is finally in love; with Cambridge academic, Emma Lavenham, whom he first met in Death in Holy Orders. James has always written with an attractively detached, chilly precision. However, in this novel, where she's also trying to write about love, her taut and ironic style lets her down completely.
Having finally allowed her hero to fall in love, James now doesn't know what to do with him, and the pace of the novel flounders periodically as a direct result. Even Dalgliesh's eventual declaration of love for Emma is as formal and awkward as any Victorian suitor's: expressed in a letter - which he makes her read in his presence. Dalgliesh in love is so disappointing and unconvincing as a narrative device that the reader can only hope, meanly, that they split up soon, so he can get back to solving crimes without distraction.
Rosita Boland is an Irish Times journalist and a poet. Her latest collection, Dissecting the Heart, is published by Gallery Press
The Murder Room By P.D. James Faber & Faber , 371pp. £17.99
