The Private Patient
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4.1 • 161 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this gripping crime thriller a renowned plastic surgeon's private clinic becomes the chilling backdrop for murder. • Part of the bestselling mystery series that inspired Dalgliesh on Acorn TV
"[James is] a master. . . . Nothing is as it first appears." —The Boston Globe
Cheverell Manor is a beautiful old house in Dorset, which its owner, the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell, uses as a private clinic. When the investigative journalist, Rhoda Gradwyn, arrives to have a disfiguring facial scar removed, she has every expectation of a successful operation and a peaceful week recuperating. But the clinic houses an implacable enemy and within hours of the operation Rhoda is murdered. Commander Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate a case complicated by old crimes and the dark secrets of the past. But Before Rhoda's murder is solved, a second horrific death adds to the complexities of one of Dalgliesh's most perplexing and fascinating cases.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In James's stellar 14th Adam Dalgliesh mystery (after 2006's The Lighthouse), the charismatic police commander knows the case of Rhoda Gradwyn, a 47-year-old journalist murdered soon after undergoing the removal of an old disfiguring scar at a private plastic surgery clinic in Dorset, may be his last; James's readers will fervently hope it isn't. Dalgliesh probes the convoluted tangle of motives and hidden desires that swirl around the clinic, Cheverell Manor, and its grimly fascinating suspects in the death of Gradwyn, herself "a stalker of minds" driven by her lifelong passion for rooting out the truth people would prefer left unknown and then selling it for money. Beyond the book's central moral concern, James meditates on universal problems like aging ("the amorphous flattening of self") and the government's education policy, which targets 50% of the young as university-bound while ensuring that another 40% are uneducated on leaving secondary school. Against her relentless intellectual view of our dying earth, James pits the love she finally grants Dalgleish sufficient to reinvigorate hope and faith so rare in both fiction and reality today.
Customer Reviews
the private patient
I am not a big fan of mysteries, but this one is quite good. I enjoyed the British setting and characters, most of whom have interesting background stories. A good captivating book.
Rambling
This is the third novel I've read by this author. The first one was a bit too long. The second moved along and had a good plot. This one was tedious. It took forever to finally disclose the murderer, but it was obvious. The author went on and on about education and life and death. Then, loose ends are tied up through vignettes. This was not her best work.
Intriguing, Well Crafted Mystery Novel...
This is a welcome addition to James's Detective Dalgliesh mystery series. The style is riveting and fast paced, the characters and plot complexities artfully shaped and pointed. This serves to draw the reader into the developing story line as the pursuit for the solution becomes increasingly frenzied. This should be viewed as a worthy acquisition for the library shelves of English Mystery Novel devotees who identify themselves as "purists" when considering their choices. This having been said, the book is about three U.S. dollars overpriced. Respectfully submitted, Daniel Shaw, MA (English Language and Literature, NYU 1969)