A case for P.D. James as a Christian novelist

Theology Today, Jan 2003 by Wood, Ralph C

In this her fifteenth novel, Lady James-the Baroness of Holland Park is a spry octogenarian-unapologetically observes the classical conventions of the crime novel. The action takes place in a High Anglican theological college, St. Anselm's, which is housed in a converted Victorian mansion. It is located far from Oxbridge, amidst James's own native grounds: the wilds of the bleak East Anglian seacoast. In such a small and isolated community, everyone becomes a suspect-as everyone also becomes mutually suspicious of the others. The victim is Ronald Treeves, a theological student whose wealthy and politically influential father, Sir Aired Treeves, doubts that his son's death was accidental and thus demands an investigation. The murder of a visiting archdeacon, committed in the college chapel amidst a furious storm, increases the already-acute tensions pervading St. Anselm's, while also reducing the number of potential culprits. One of them proves to have been present at this latter murder while not being the villain. In addition to two other murders and several red herrings, we are also faced with the obligatory sorting out of alibis.

The plot itself hinges on a long list of complicating discoveries that are all gradually revealed: incest, illegitimacy, adultery, witchcraft, alleged pederasty, a secret marriage, a missing cloak, a valuable altar triptych, even a papyrus that may constitute the actual orders of Pontius Pilate for the removal of Christ's body from the Cross. Adam Dalgliesh, James's London poet-detective, enters the crime scene as a volunteer. Though willing to honor the powerful plutocrat Reeves, Dalgliesh wants mainly to help the distraught St. Anselm community because he spent happy times vacationing there as a youth. In the end, of course, he brilliantly unravels the tangled skein of clues, motives, and secrets to identify the culprit and to restore at least a modicum of peace and order to the quiet community whose life had been so dreadfully interrupted.

Thus far we have the ordinary staples of standard detective fiction. But for James, it is precisely the limits of her genre that offer enormous possibilities for moral and religious discernment. To observe the conventions of the crime novel is not a constraint so much as a challenge. James subscribes to what might be called an incarnational aesthetic: She wants to render the world in all of the fullness and depth, with all of the complexity and horror, that the triune God assumed in becoming flesh within a single human life-not within humanity at large. Just as Jesus was not obviously the incarnate God, so do many of James's Christian concerns remain unstated. They are present more by subtle implication than by overt reference. Her careful attention to character portrayal, for instance, reveals a deeply incarnational conviction that human life must not be flattened into caricatures and stereotypes. It must be honored, instead, in all of its rich particularity and vexing ambiguity.

In her new novel, no fewer than thirty-five characters-from cooks and porters to an archdeacon and a renowned financier-make their entrances and exits. James gives each one of them a name and shape and identity. Thus does she remind us that these creatures great and small are not mere ciphers. They are human beings with their own miseries and joys, and they demand our acknowledgement. We are made to care about them, even those who are unsavory. Far greater, of course, is the sympathy James generates for her likable and lovable characters, especially her hero-detective. We learn much more about Dalgliesh in this novel than we have previously known. Reminded that his wife died in childbirth, we are also told that Dalgliesh's unbelief is not a sign of bitter rebellion against God so much as blank incomprehension at such suffering and death.