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Shroud for a Nightingale

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There are fantastical possibilities of suicide which are discussed, but the evidence finally leads to a diagnosis of murder, but for what motives? Dalgliesh and his somewhat rebellious assistant Masterson have to cover a lot of ground before the diabolical reasons can be unearthed. Along the way there is yet another murder combined with a concealing fire and Dalgliesh himself becomes a potential victim.

In the first episode, we scramble to untangle the relationships between the trainee nurses as they gather for a demonstration of assisted feeding, with one of their own, Heather Pierce ( Beccy Henderson), chosen to be the subject. Except she wasn’t the first choice––that was Josephine Fallon ( Siobhán Cullen), who’s been in the adjacent hospital overnight (or maybe not). The trainees are observed by their supervisors, Matron Mary Taylor ( Natasha Little), Sister Gearing ( Fenella Woolgar), and Sister Brumfett ( Amanda Root), and by the arrogant bigwig surgeon Stephen Courtney-Briggs ( Richard Dillane). I haven’t anything to offer. There isn’t any help. We are all alone, all of us from the moment of birth until we die. Our past is our present and our future. We have to live with ourselves until there isn’t any more time left. If you want salvation look to yourself. There’s nowhere else to look.” “The full enormity of the crime”This is the fourth book in the Adam Dalgliesh series. I have recently been re-reading these novels and, although I have enjoyed the previous books, this certainly represents a seeming increase in ability and confidence in the writing and storyline. “Shroud for a Nightingale,” is set in a nurse training school and P D James worked for the NHS for many years, so it is an environment she would have been extremely familiar with.

Shroud for a Nightingale, published in 1971, was the fourth crime novel by P.D. James, the fourth of a series centered on Scotland Yard detective Adam Dalgliesh that would eventually total 14. Someone had substituted a cream-looking disinfectant for the warm milk used in a teaching session on feeding a patient by intragastric tube. Nurse Heather Pearce, the student subject, died a painful death. Sixteen days later, Josephine Fallon, the intended target of the deadly teaching session who had been excused that day because of influenza, is poisoned in her room after a quiet evening watching television. Again, the tightknit community would like to believe her death was a suicide, not a murder.Granted this book is older than me, so the dated stereotypes and gender roles within it partially lose their sting. I tried to read it that way, in its historical place as a very psychologically outdated book (as I do with Agatha Christie for example and still derive some enjoyment) but it still rankled even so. Madeleine Goodale said: "I should think that everyone knew. Everyone at Nightingale House anyway. There was enough talk about it at breakfast." It was much better than the three previous books — Cover Her Face (1962), A Mind to Murder (1963), and Unnatural Causes (1967) — but not as good as the ones that would follow. So at best the plot is a sort of maypole dance with Dalgliesh as the maypole, the focus of female passive-receptive desire (how many times does a female character in a PD James novel irrelevantly notice that the aging Dalgliesh is "handsome" or "attractive"? Other males are too arrogant and abusive to compare to him. Females are clinging, toxic and weak but seen through a victim-blaming lens and males get away with their abusive attitudes and are only very indulgently even judged by the narration. All relationships are in this novel invariably either casual and superficial or toxic, intimacy is a form of imprisonment in every single situation as far as I can see. Julia Pardoe's composed, rather childish voice went on: "So if the victim was really meant to be Fallon, it couldn't have been one of us, could it? We all knew that Fallon wouldn't be acting the patient this morning."

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