When the body of a theology student is found on a desolate stretch of coast in East Anglia, his wealthy father demands that Scotland Yard should re-examine the verdict of accidental death. Commander Adam Dalgliesh agrees to pay a visit to the young man's theological college, St Anselm's, a place he knew as a boy, expecting no more than a nostalgic return to old haunts and a straightforward examination of the evidence. Instead he finds himself embroiled in intrigue, secrets and mystery as the college is torn apart by a sacrilegious and horrifying murder . . .
Award-winning P.D. James (author of Death Comes to Pemberley and Children of Men) masterfully explores an isolated and beleaguered community coping with the evil and disruption of murder. In 2003, this novel was adapted for BBC television and starred Martin Shaw, Hugh Fraser and Robert Hardy.
Set on the wild coast of East Anglia, this number one bestseller is the fourteenth Adam Dalgliesh novel and a thrilling work of crime fiction possessing all of the qualities which distinguish P. D. James as a novelist.

Portrait

P. D. James (1920-2014) was a bestselling and internationally acclaimed crime writer best known for her books starring poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh. She wrote nineteen novels as well as several short story collections and works of non-fiction. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages, and has sold millions of copies worldwide. Among many international prizes, awards and honours, she received the highest honours in both British and American crime writing: the CWA Diamond Dagger for a lifetime contribution to the genre, and the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award. She was inducted into the Crime Writing Hall of Fame in 2008.
Beyond her writing, she worked in the National Health Service and then in the Home Office for over thirty years, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department, and made use of all this experience in her novels. She served as president of the Society of Authors for sixteen years, and was a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1983 she was awarded an OBE, and she was made a life peer in 1991. She died in 2014.