P. D. James - Devices and Desires

Brilliant wonderful. P. D. James does it again.

USA Today

Her stories are so engrossing that it is difficult to read slowly enough to pay attention to the remarkable writing. But in Devices and Desires, she is so at the top of her form that to rush through would itself be a crime.

The Kansas City Star

Undiluted pleasure.

Newsday

Vintage P. D. James. Devotees of Britains Queen of Crime will be enthralled showcasing lyrical prose abounding with vivid imagery, superbly delineated characters, and a labyrinthine puzzle. Its impossible to resist this haunting, dark tale.

Milwaukee Journal

Were glued to P. D. Jamess beautifully spun whodunit. The masters shivering touch is intact.

Glamour

A cleverly crafted book that readers may very well stay up all night to finish. She exposes the murderously repressed rage beneath the calm surface of typical middle-class Britishers.

Boston Herald

The greatest living mystery writer weaves a dazzling array of psychological profiles into a gently ironic examination of human life and the relative value we ascribe to it.

People

James at her best a superb tale of murder.

Booklist

Devices and Desires may be her best yet. The plot is superb, with the larger moral issues of a nearby nuclear power station and the thickly interwoven lives of characters lending measured gravity to the sensational murder story. And the prose style is a dream.

The Seattle Times

Un-put-downable. P D. James is never content with just a formulaic detective story. She takes the whodunit to deeper levels.

New Woman

James is one of Britains best writers in the genre. Devices and Desires brings the classic whodunit as far as it can go.

The Detroit News

The best book shes written. It has literary merit that detective works seldom attempt everything fits beautifully.

The Sacramento Bee

No other mystery writerand few writers periodoffers such a rich bounty. Devices and Desires is superb. It is what good writingand readingis all about. James has used all her powers to produce her best work yet. Her fansold and newwill be overjoyed.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

James once again gives us a convincing portrait of contemporary society, while at the same time she scrupulously observesand smartly updates and complicatesall the mystery genre conventions.

San Diego Magazine

Demonstrates just how well James commands the English language. The complex plot unfolds into the usual Jamesian tangle of human relationships and subplots. The story takes shape as James unwraps each nuance of personality, each intricate piece of the puzzle.

Library Journal

P. D. James is the author of eighteen books, most of which have been filmed and broadcast on television in the United States and other countries. She spent thirty years in various departments of the British Civil Service, including the Police and Criminal Law Departments of Great Britains Home Office. She has served as a magistrate and as a governor of the BBC. In 2000 she celebrated her eightieth birthday and published her autobiography, Time to Be in Earnest. The recipient of many prizes and honors, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. She lives in London and Oxford.

FICTION

Cover Her Face

A Mind to Murder

Unnatural Causes

Shroud for a Nightingale

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

The Black Tower

Death of an Expert Witness

Innocent Blood

The Skull Beneath the Skin

A Taste for Death

The Children of Men Original Sin

A Certain Justice

Death in Holy Orders

The Murder Room

NONFICTION

The Maul and the Pear Tree:

The Ratcliffe Highway Murders, 1811

(with T. A. Critchley)

Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography

First Vintage Books Edition, May 2004

Copyright1989 by P.D. James

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division
of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover
in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Ltd., London, in 1989, and
subsequently in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York in 1990.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
James, P. D.
Devices and desires.
1. Title.
PR6060.A467D4 1990 823.914
89-45305

eISBN: 978-0-307-76060-9

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

This story is set on an imaginary headland on the north-east coast of Norfolk. Lovers of this remote and fascinating part of East Anglia will place it between Cromer and Great Yarmouth, but they must not expect to recognize its topography, nor to find Larksoken Nuclear Power Station, Lydsett Village or Larksoken Mill. Other place names are genuine, but this is merely the novelists cunning device to add authenticity to fictitious characters and events. In this novel only the past and the future are real; the present, like the people and the setting, exists only in the imagination of the writer and her readers.