P. D James

It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy's magnificent estate. Their peaceful, orderly world seems almost unassailable. Elizabeth has found her footing as the chatelaine of the great house. They have two fine sons, Fitzwilliam and Charles. Elizabeth's sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; her father visits often; there is optimistic talk about the prospects of marriage for Darcy's...

When investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn turns up dead after seeing renowned plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell for a routine surgical procedure, Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called in to investigate.

On the surface, the Steen Psychiatric Clinic is one of the most reputable institutions in London. But when the administrative head is found dead with a chisel in her heart, that distinguished facade begins to crumble as the truth emerges. Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate and quickly finds himself caught in a whirlwind of psychiatry, drugs, and deceit. Now he must analyze the deep-seated anxieties and thwarted...

The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed. Another student dies equally mysteriously, and it is up to Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard to unmask a killer who has decided to prescribe murder as the cure for all ills.

When a detective novelist is discovered drifting toward shore in a dinghy, his hands cut off at the wrists, the members of the little literary coterie who knew him must each prove his innocence to the vacationing Dalgliesh.

Elizabeth and Darcy, now six years married and with two young sons, are preparing for the lavish annual ball at their magnificent Pemberley home, when a scream is heard crying "murder".

Scotland Yard detective Commander Adam Dalgliesh, is called to conduct an unwelcome investigation in an isolated religious college torn apart by suicide and murder.