Shroud for a Nightingale

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Shroud for a Nightingale is a 1971 detective novel written by PD James in her Adam Dalgliesh series. Chief Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate the death of two student nurses at the hospital nursing school of Nightingale House. Seventeen days later, Nurse Fallon is found dead in her bed, her eyes wide open but cold and opaque. James obviously read and admired Christie, as did most women readers (and writers!) of her generation. Early on in her career you can easily see how Christie and Sayers et. al. have influenced her. But James then goes on to actually improve upon their writing style, at least IMO, becoming one of the best current practitioners of the "traditional style" mystery now living and still writing. As she's extremely elderly now, I suspect she won't be publishing much more in the future, alas. So savor her earlier works if and when you can - while quite old-fashioned they're still a treat!

As the two friends were to tell each other for years to come, with that cosy predilection for re-stating the obvious which is one of the pleasures of long intimacy, she could hardly have been more wrong. Miss Beale, expecting nothing worse of the day than a tedious drive, an arduous inspection, and a possible tussle with those members of the Hospital Nurse Education Committee who took the trouble to attend, dragged her dressing-gown around her shoulders, stubbed her feet into her bedroom slippers and shuffled off into the bathroom. She had taken the first steps on her way to witness a murder. Nursing "sisters" are an alien breed to most US folks, but if you've read or watched a lot of British-set mysteries you'll have a bit of understanding how their ranking system for nurses and doctors works; the plot of this intricate mystery is closely woven around this, with the information presented slowly and interestingly. The systems of training in British hospitals of the period is the center for this murder mystery, and James shows not only her familiarity with the Health Service and many of its ramifications (she worked for them for many years and was, I think, still working for them when she wrote this). But don't be put off by this - the plot is a very good (if convoluted) one, the characters remarkably fine, and the overall writing while a mite florid in spots is beautifully done. There was a murmur from the class. Sister Gearing raised an interrogative eyebrow. The spectacled student said:Miss Burrows frequently terrified her own students, not to mention most of her colleagues on the teaching staff, but would have been amazed to be told it. Miss Beale asked: The complexity of the characters is one of the delights when reading PD James. Unlikeable characters turn out to have wholly innocent explanations for their rather suspicious carrying-on, while the more likeable ones have the most to hide. The author is sharply observant and remorseless in her portrayal of the arrogance of surgeons and the unconscious selfishness of young girls in a school environment. In fact, SfaN fails to maintain coherence or resolve some basic questions, even as it wastes time on redundant scenes. A character's mysterious knowledge of a victim's private financial details is treated as suspicious, then never explained. Certain innocent suspects act excessively secretive for no apparent reason. Meanwhile, events that could be conveyed in seconds are given minute upon minute of dead time. In the end, there's no reason this program should be 5 hrs. long. Dalgliesh blinked, erasing the image of a witch’s plaything, a grotesque puppet casually tossed against the pillow. When he next looked at her, she was again a dead girl on a bed; no more and no loss. Granted this book is older than me, so the dated stereotypes and gender roles within it partially lose their sting. I tried to read it that way, in its historical place as a very psychologically outdated book (as I do with Agatha Christie for example and still derive some enjoyment) but it still rankled even so.

So at best the plot is a sort of maypole dance with Dalgliesh as the maypole, the focus of female passive-receptive desire (how many times does a female character in a PD James novel irrelevantly notice that the aging Dalgliesh is "handsome" or "attractive"? Other males are too arrogant and abusive to compare to him. Females are clinging, toxic and weak but seen through a victim-blaming lens and males get away with their abusive attitudes and are only very indulgently even judged by the narration. All relationships are in this novel invariably either casual and superficial or toxic, intimacy is a form of imprisonment in every single situation as far as I can see. Written in a completely classic style this may seem a bit slow-moving for modern tastes, but is downright explosive when compared with earlier, similar, stories. I've recently been reading Mignon Eberhart's nursing mysteries from the 1930s, and if you want "slow-moving thriller" (not *exactly* an oxymoron...), then her earliest work is for you! But while Eberhart was entertaining, James is an overall much better writer, and it is fascinating to see here how little of the attitudes towards nurses and their craft had changed in the intervening forty years. And while outside of the small-hospital environment (the nurses live-in, and don't spend much time in The Real World) things are changing rapidly in the social sense, here the ethos is of an older Britain even in 1970 - the values are traditional, the plotting traditional, the writing style traditional. But not stuffy, not at all boring. Each book is your typical murder-mystery whodunit with Inspector Dalgliesh set the seemingly impossible task of unmasking the culprit. Correct. And as our patient is conscious and able to swallow we are giving her this feed by mouth. Don't forget to reassure your patient, Nurse. Explain simply to her what you are going to do and why. Remember this, girls, never begin any nursing procedure without telling your patient what is to happen." The denouement was beautifully and frighteningly portrayed as in the book, but there are some scenes missing. Some of these aspects are important to the storyThis story opening in Nightingale House in 1975 where a group of trainee nurses are being taught. In the class they are giving a demonstration of how to feed a patient through a tube, with a nurse playing the part of the patient... as soon as the liquid in the tube reaches her stomach she reacts violently and dies. It appears that somebody has replaced the milk meant to be used with disinfectant. Inspector Adam Dalgliesh and DS Charles Masterson turn up to investigate. As the case progresses various suspects and motives emerge. Actor Bertie Carvel as Adam Dalgliesh in the Acorn TV series "Dalgliesh" (2021-). Image sourced from IMDb.

If you don’t want the facade of a cosy novel but would rather abstain from the gratuitous drugs, sex and violence of hardboiled fiction, P.D. James dominates the middle ground. Shroud for a Nightingale is a mystery, long on clues, characterisation and plot, and a dollop of emotional nastiness thrown in for good measure. Excerpt This must be the shortest inspection on record. What on earth will I say to the General Nursing Council?"James was that rare mystery writer and, for that matter, rare writer who could see and feel in the routine the deeper waters of life and loss. It was much better than the three previous books — Cover Her Face (1962), A Mind to Murder (1963), and Unnatural Causes (1967) — but not as good as the ones that would follow.