---
title: "Cover Her Face by PD James (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries #1)"
description: "Summary: An unlikable maid is found dead and there are too many people that could have killed her. PD James is one of those authors that I feel like I should have read by now. I picked up a..."
url: https://bookwi.se/cover-her-face/
date: 2018-08-22
modified: 2018-08-22
author: "Adam Shields"
categories: ["Book Reviews"]
type: post
lang: en
---

# Cover Her Face by PD James (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries #1)

[![Cover Her Face by PD James (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries #1)](https://bookwi.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/NewImage-11.png)](https://www.amazon.com/Cover-Her-Face-Dalgliesh-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B007OV600W/)**Summary: An unlikable maid is found dead and there are too many people that could have killed her.**

PD James is one of those authors that I feel like I should have read by now. I picked up a collection of the first six books in the series on kindle for cheap a bit ago and ended up checking out the audiobook from the library last week.

I read some Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes as a teen and was not particularly interested in the “˜who dun it’ aspects of mysteries. But I have been turned on to mysteries over the past several year with the more character based mysteries of [Louise Penny](https://bookwi.se/glass-houses/), [Martin Walker](https://bookwi.se/bruno/), [J Mark Bertrand](https://bookwi.se/back-on-murder/), [Rhys Bowen](https://bookwi.se/her-royal-spyness/), [Dorothy Sayers](https://bookwi.se/unnatural-death/) and [Georges Simenon](https://bookwi.se/pietr-the-latvian/). The mystery is still present, but the focus is more psychological and about the people around the crime than the particulars of the crime.

I have been listening to a Great Courses lecture on The Great Books for Skeptics and it cites these books and PD James as the start of a shift from the more formulaic pulp mysteries to more literary mysteries that are more common today.

I did not realize until I listened to the lecture after finishing Cover Her Face that it was written in 1962. It does not feel particularly old, but more a historical mystery set a couple of generations ago.

I had fairly low expectations because I have heard from a number of people that this series takes several books to really pick up steam. I enjoyed Cover Her Face and will read more, but it was not the best book I have read in a while. While this may have been the start of a new style of mystery, it felt fairly close in method to Agatha Christie’s [Orient Express](https://bookwi.se/murder-on-the-orient-express-by-agatha-christie/), which was the most recent mystery that I read.

Both books had an unlikable victim with a number of people that could have killed them and a number of people that would like to have seen them disappear. Both have the cultured, brilliant, slightly tortured detective. Both have a standard reveal where everyone is brought together at the end and the murder is laid out and the murder identified. But I do think that Adam Dalgliesh is more comparable to [Inspector Gamache](https://bookwi.se/still-life/) than Poirot, which does agree with the suggestion from the lecture.

I probably will keep checking out the audiobooks from the library now that I know they are there and because I enjoyed Cover Her Face

**Cover Her Face by PD James (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries #1) Purchase Links: [Paperback](https://www.amazon.com/Cover-Face-Adam-Dalgliesh-Mysteries/dp/0743219570/), [Kindle Edition](https://www.amazon.com/Cover-Her-Face-Dalgliesh-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B007OV600W/), [Audible.com Audiobook](https://www.amazon.com/Cover-Her-Face/dp/B001LNK960/) **