Dame of the Decades

 

It is often true that as an entertainer, writer, or other celebrity figure reaches senior birthday landmarks, the attention, accolades, and retrospectives start pouring out of the woodwork. Sometimes it's more a matter of sentimentality and a nod toward the individual's sheer staying power in an ever-changing cultural landscape, but often it's deserved.

Such is the case with writer PD James, who celebrated her 88th birthday in August, has a new Adam Dalgliesh novel out, The Private Patient, and has been the subject of several interviews and articles lately, including the Times Online, BBC Radio, the Vancouver Sun, and the CBC News. In them it's said "The detective novels of P.D. James are a window on our times," and "In the eyes of many admirers [she's] the world's finest living crime novelist," and there are probably truths in both statements.

She didn't begin writing until she was in her 40s and now she has 40 years of Dalgliesh behind her. And it's those 40 years of writing that led the Times Online to make the statement about James's novels being a mirror of changes through those decades,

"In negotiating his way through the pathways of human destructiveness, Dalgliesh is also a guide to our times. Lady James is a perceptive chronicler of the changing landscape of London; the flux of urban development and the housing market; the corrosive culture of sink estates; the ruthless politics of the professions; and even the use of the internet for hedonistic purposes."

When asked what it's been like to have Adam Dalgliesh in her life for so long, she replied,

"When I began, I didn’t know he’d be a serial character, and of course there’s the challenge of having readers suspend their disbelief. He hasn’t aged that much over 40 years and each novel is set in the time of its writing. But I did try to create a character that was someone I’d really like. I gave Dalgliesh the qualities I admire in both men and women: he’s good-looking, highly intelligent, compassionate but not sentimental, and reserved. It was important too that he was a character who could develop. I never wanted to know him too well. I think Agatha Christie got rather fed up with Hercule Poirot at the end, because she had made him both too old and just too bizarre."

As to what the future holds? She's working on a history of crime fiction in conjunction with Oxford's Bodleian Library, for one. But will there be another Dalgliesh novel?

"I really don't know. There's something almost valedictory about this one, isn't there? So it depends on an idea coming that is so strong I feel compelled to write another one. But I think this new one has set a rather high standard. I won't want to go on if I can't maintain that standard."