Title:
Original Sin
Author:
P. D. James
Publisher:
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1994
ISBN
0-679-43889

Original Sin by PD James, copyright 1994, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., ISBN 0-679-43889, is a mediocre whodunnit supposedly starring PD James's stock-in-trade, Adam Dalgliesh. If I were Adam Dalgliesh, though, I'd sue for breach of contract and defamation of character.

Peverell Press is a fictional publishing house with an extraordinary run of bad luck in the recent past. When the chair of the five partners running the firm is found dead under suspicious circumstances, AD and his team are called into action. Each partner has sufficient motives for the murder, but the murderer's identity is not revealed until almost to the end of the story.

PD James has written a psycho romance of sorts, involving herself with the inner thoughts and motivations of a loose collection of people. The reader is expected to use these insights as clues to try to solve the puzzle. Just how successfully that is done the reader should discover for themselves, although on its own merits it reads quite well.

The book is also a flighty examination of the concepts of justice and revenge. Anyone who expects a mystery to produce an intelligent look at these issues deserves to be disappointed, but PD James is so ham handed in this undertaking that the whole book might do better to be rewritten as a farce.

What troubled me most about the story was PD James's introduction of an overt racist streak into the story. The idea that a Jewish inspector of the Scotland Yard is somehow not to be trusted simply because he is Jewish was quite distasteful to me. Why did PD James trouble her plot with this unnecessary addition? There is no real justification for this behavior in the character's established background, and the story adds nothing to explain it. I have talked to other people about this, and so far have received no feedback indicating that I am being overly sensitive about this issue.

I am afraid that I cannot recommend the book to PD James fans, or to Adam Dalgliesh devotees. This is not one of PD James's better novels.