P. D. James's Discontinuous Narrative: A Suitable Job for a Reader

Abstract

P.D. James's first four novels, 'Cover Her Face' (1962), 'A Mind to Murder' (1963), 'Unnatural Causes' (1967), and 'Shroud for a Nightingale' (1971), conformed to the traditional ongoing nature of crime fiction made familiar by such early writers as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. These authors helped establish the convention of serialisation. Within this tradition, an individual novel may be published in chapter installments in a magazine, often in conjunction with a series of short stories that share a main character while still having their own complete and unique plot.1 Such texts were dominated by the presence of a strong central detective, and James's first novels follow this pattern by focusing on the main character, Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh. Like most novel series, each isolated part can be read as a discrete unit or as part of the continuing story.