Four previously uncollected stories from one of the great mystery writers of our time --swift, cunning murder mysteries (two of which feature the young Adam Dalgliesh) that together, to borrow the author's own word, add up to a delightful "entertainment."

The newly appointed Sgt. Dalgliesh is drawn into a case that is "pure Agatha Christie." . . . A "pedantic, respectable, censorious" clerk's secret taste for pornography is only the first reason he finds for not coming forward as a witness to a murder . . . A best-selling crime novelist describes the crime she herself was involved in fifty years earlier . . . Dalgliesh's godfather implores him to reinvestigate a notorious murder that might ease the godfather's mind about an inheritance, but which will reveal a truth that even the supremely upstanding Adam Dalgliesh will keep to himself. Each of these stories is as playful as it is ingeniously plotted, the author's sly humor as evident as her hallmark narrative...

The beautiful maid with the shadowy past was dead, strangled in her bed. Everyone in the elegant Maxie household from Stephen Maxie, son and heir, to Martha, the respectable housekeeper, had a reason to hate her. Detective Chief-Inspector Adam Dalgleish, Scotland Yard's super sleuth, needed all his considerable skills to unmask the cunning killer.

SUMMARY: When a sly and sensuous young woman who had used her body and her brains to climb the social ladder is murdered by someone who had clearly decided that the wages of sin should be death, it falls to Inspector Adam Dalgliesh to find out who the killer is. MASS MARKET PAPER

When the administrative head of the Steen Psychiatric Clinic is found dead with a chisel in her heart, Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate. Dalgliesh must analyze the deep-seated anxieties and thwarted desires of patients and staff alike to determine which of their unresolved conflicts resulted in murder. With "discernment, depth, and craftsmanship," wrote the *Chicago Daily News,* *A Mind to Murder* "is a superbly satisfying mystery." The terrifying truth about an eminent psychiatric clinic comes out when the administrative head is found horribly murdered. And in an explosive atmosphere of psychiatry, sex, and drugs, Dalgliesh has the uneviable task of finding a killer out to prove that the first murder was no Freudian slip. Reissue.

The scientists who work at Hoggatt's laboratory are all experts in violent death, accustomed to the smell of the mortuary. Now the brutal murder of one of their own brings Adam Dalgliesh hurrying from Scotland Yard to the fens of East Anglia, where a murderer is waiting to strike again.

Review

"P.D. James is unbeatable." -- The Ottawa Citizen

"P.D. James is a remarkable writer." -- Ruth Rendell

"Shines with lucidity and firm intelligence." -- Newsweek

"A craftsman with a poet's vision... she not only detects evil but attempts to uncover the more elusive -- and enduring -- enigmas of the human psyche that lead to it." -- Time