According to dust-jacket blurbs, James and Rendell are the queens of contemporary detective fiction, just as were Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie of the previous generation. Furthermore, journal reviews praise James as a masterful writer and storyteller, even though her work is considered popular rather than serious. James has been instrumental, along with other writers of the last three decades, in narrowing the gap between crime fiction and serious fiction, between what Sayers had separated as "literature of escape" and "literature of expression."
The James canon of fourteen novels is by no means homogenous: a progression of changes in style, mood, and scope can be discerned along the way, as well as variations in the investigative focus of her detective novels. Adam Dalgliesh, whom she created as her New Scotland Yard inspector, is her primary detective and stars alone in her early books. Later in the series, two young professional women detectives join him as major characters. Cordelia Gray, a private investigator, is featured in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972) and The Skull beneath the Skin (1982).
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