I first heard of P. D. James when I was at a bookstore and picked this massive book I'd never heard of from a shelf to look at it. When I saw it was a detective novel, my first reaction was: how the hell could a mystery novel be like 600+ pages? How could it even be possible to sustain the level of mystery and tension for that long a page count? It was just weirdly inconceivable to me at that point, but interesting nonetheless.

Anyway, when I started reading James properly I did it in chronological order -- kind of out of my fear of long books, but also because I thought it'd be interesting to track the growth of her ambition from novel to novel. And I'm glad I did, because each book has been getting better and better. But now I decided to take a leap forward in the series and tackle the longest one yet, a novel truly of her peak mature period.

And it's brilliant. An absolute masterpiece.

Every qualm I had all that time ago about mystery being sustained for so long a plot has been answered, because the plot isn't even that long -- it's all about the detail. James is not just a phenomenal crime writer, but also a phenomenal novelist full stop in the astounding levels of attention she gives absolutely everything. There is literally no character in the entire story, no matter how minor, who doesn't have an incredibly richly drawn backstory or personal character, done even in just a few lines. Every setting is as depthful as if you've been there yourself. The prose is verbose and literate but never oppressive. And the plot is so well-maintained and sustained that the page count flies by like nothing.

If you're reared on American or hardboiled crime like I was you might find the level of detail distracting or even kind of boring (and let's just say I'm really glad I didn't start with this book either -- my reaction a year or two ago might've been a lot different). But I was just so drawn into the world of the story that there were hardly any digressions to me at all. Everything had a purpose and every turn of the story felt natural.

If I had one criticism it might be that the reveal of the mystery doesn't quite pay off the level of intrigue that had been built up over the preceding 600 pages (and I touched on this in my last James review too that as a mystery writer she's not quite as adept at crafting a truly surprising twist reveal as many of her peers), but that's only a judgement put up against the confines of its genre. Stories are relative, not absolute. And as a story, and as a piece of literature, this was truly near perfect for me. Friggin masterpiece of its class.