All of James's detective stories — with the exception of Innocent Blood (1980), which is not really a detective story — are united by the person of Adam Dalgliesh. He is less important in the two Cordelia Gray stories, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972) and The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982), although he figures in both, especially the first. Of the six stories united by Dalgliesh, the best after Death of an Expert Witness is probably Shroud for a Nightingale (1971) set in a nurses' home called Nightingale House at John Carpendar Hospital in Heatheringfield on the Sussex/ Hampshire border. The hospital milieu was familiar to James from her own experience, and the student nurse type from her training to work with juveniles. The murders of two student nurses open a web of intrigue.....
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