A rich menu of murder, garnished with shame

Review: THE LIGHTHOUSE By PD James, Alfred A. Knopf, €9.99

On the 305th page of PD James's classically wrought new mystery, The Lighthouse, the requisite thunderbolt strikes Commander Adam Dalgliesh. Again. As follows: "And suddenly, with no sense of revelation and no exultation but with absolute certainty, he saw the answer to the puzzle. It was as if the wooden pieces of a spherical puzzle were whirling wildly about his head and then, piece by piece, clicking together into a perfect globe. The truth came to him in snatches of conversation, the voices as clear as if they were being spoken into his ear."

This traditional eureka moment is something to gladden hearts – at least among aficionados of the formally perfect murder scheme. The Lighthouse will gratify that readership with what the author herself calls "copybook killings: a small closed society, no access from outside, a limited number of suspects." It is set on a lonely island where the cottages have names like Peregrine and Puffin. In one such dwelling there is a symbolic figurine that winds up symbolically broken. These are shades of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, which this novel has the good grace to resemble.

The Lighthouse is too rooted in genre conventions to count originality as its strong suit. But it has deviousness to burn, and it also offers other enticements. It's the kind of book that boasts a wryly humorous Scrabble scene, not to mention a Scrabble-lover's vocabulary: James makes ready use of words like abseil, belay, symphysis and meiosis. It's a book that serves up figurative red herring as well as melon balls in orange sauce. Not a menu goes unmentioned.

Even its murder victim is delectable: a famous writer whose photograph reveals "the lineaments of intellectual power, even of nobility" but who also has a decidedly cruel streak. His name is Nathan Oliver, and he is said to be like Henry James, only better. Naturally, everyone on Combe Island, which is itself a place of patrician refinement and exclusivity, has reason to hate him.

"The egregiously rich and famous might not always like each other but they were at home in the topography of each other's privileged bailiwicks," writes James, in the voluptuous tone that distinguishes her as something other than a garden-variety mystery writer. If this sometimes grows overripe (about lovers: "How complicated and unstressed had been their joyous carnality"), it also exerts a certain fascination. While Commander Dalgliesh reflects upon "that half-ecclesiastical patina of authority bestowed on those who dealt in esoteric mysteries," his young protégée, Detective Inspector Kate Miskin, contemplates "the small sprig of shame" that comes with this line of work. Like the reader, Kate secretly thrills to the discovery of each new corpse.

Nathan Oliver is found hanging from the Combe Island lighthouse ? a location of some importance since, as James points out, it is both a phallic symbol and a monument to the Island's distinguished past. In this lethal but literate context, going to the lighthouse makes one of the detectives think of Virginia Woolf. He also realises he should refrain from saying so.

Could the lighthouse hanging have been suicide? "In what extremity of despair or with what exhilarating exultation would a man hurl himself into this infinity?" Dalgliesh wonders, staring down from the lighthouse rail and peering into the deep. Fortunately, it is a vicious killing rather than a sad, self-inflicted one. Suicide would allow the book little pretext to dutifully catalogue the island's residents and the assorted guilty secrets they bear.

At its best, James's precision can be as deftly murderous as the weapons her killers wield. Oliver's daughter (motive: Oliver's treating her like a servant and refusing to let her marry) is cited for "matronly stateliness," "slightly marsupial cheeks" and "no signs of recent weeping." The island's reigning aristocrat, Emily Holcombe (motive: Oliver wanted to evict her from her ocean front cottage), deals with her butler's starchy demeanour by telling him that he has been reading too much PG Wodehouse.

Whoever held the lethal grudge against Oliver has added insult to injury by burning the annotated manuscript of Oliver's latest novel. James is at her most barbed in describing Oliver's writing process – and his method of inflicting real misery on real people as a form of research. For instance, he sportingly destroyed the sobriety of the island's clergyman. "He was writing a book with a character who was a drunkard and he wanted to witness exactly what happened when you feed wine to an alcoholic," another island resident explains about the Oliver technique.

In her recent novels, James has paid considerable attention to Dalgliesh's amorous stirrings. This time, she has him dream of attending his own wedding in his underwear, which may bode ill for his romantic future.

But The Lighthouse also benches Dalgliesh during a period of illness. And it shifts attention to Kate, who is only slightly less brooding than her famously poetic boss. "How odd that the river and this ocean shared the same element, the same salt taste on the tongue, the same tangy smell," thinks Kate, who lives near the Thames. At this very moment, writes James, "a small splash of spume alighted on her cheek and dried before she could raise a hand to wipe it away."

Spume notwithstanding, The Lighthouse is a better book than its predecessor, The Murder Room. Its format and intent are more appealing and clear. And it is a sturdy installment in a well-honed series, which is a concept that even its characters understand. Kate packs a copy of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency for her Combe Island adventure.

JANET MASLIN

© The New York Times