[P. D.] James's Death of an Expert Witness is quite possibly her best book: certainly the characters are the most credible, the writing is the most controlled (after a slight lapse in The Black Tower), and the sense of rhythm is the most subtle. There is an unexplained red herring early on and the reader is told a little too clearly that the solution is buried in the past, in a scene in which a scientific officer examines a coerolith, the skeleton of a microorganism from ancient seas now found in the chalk of East Anglia. But all else is perfect….
Adam Dalgliesh is a sensitive, keenly intelligent officer from Scotland Yard whose growth is palpable from book to book; he is also a poet, and Miss James convinces us that he is a good one without making the mistake of giving us any of his poetry. He can quote Crabbe, the most English of poets, "and not only get it right but make it relevant." In the end the murderer forfeits the right to feel pain and Dalgliesh must feel it for the murderer.
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