If winter comes, can spring be far behind? - one month a Ruth Rendell mystery, the next a P.D. James, Rendell's Reg Wexford shuffling away into the wings, his place taken by the more suave glide of James's Commander Adam Dalgliesh - although Dalgliesh is almost peripheral to this offering, appearing only one third of the way through the book and then only as a father figure to his subordinates, Detective Inspectors Kate Miskin and Piers Tarrant.
The setting is the legal world, the Middle Temple chambers, where QC Venetia Aldridge is found one morning dead as mutton, with a fatal stab wound to the heart and a blood-splashed wig on her head. Suspects for her killing are multitudinous: Drysdale Laud, whose rival she is to succeed ageing Hubert St John Langton as Head of Chambers; fellow QC Simon Costello, about whom she has discovered compromising information; her lover, Mark Rawlstone, a married MP; her discarded husband; maybe even her daughter, Octavia, who feels ignored and neglected.
And there are more, but, as the saying goes, they are too numerous to mention. Red herrings, of course, abound, and we the readers are led down lots of blind alleys, only to end up surveying metaphorical blank walls. A bit of cheating, I feel, is involved here, as the ultimate culprit is lumped in to the extent that we are given an insight into his/her mind, but with no intimation of the uneasiness that must surely be occasioned by the committing of a murder.
There are a number of subplots. The dysfunctional daughter falls in with one Garry Ashe, who has just been defended successfully by her mother on the charge of cutting up his Aunt Rita. Aha! Then there is the genteel Janet Carpenter, a kind of Joyce Grenfell clone and a most unlikely cleaner in the Chamber offices. Who is she, really, and what is she about? And another colleague of Virginia Aldridge's, Desmond Ulrick, who stores a pint of his own blood in his refrigerator - what is his secret, and had he cause to hate the murdered woman?
Conundrum heaped on conundrum. Miskin and Tarrant do the leg-work, while Dalgliesh applies himself to more sedentary pursuits - the little grey cells, don't you know, and perhaps a verse or two of poetry. Another body turns up, this time with its throat cut, and a pursuit takes place that ends up in violence. Then there is the coda, where the original miscreant is unveiled but not charged with anything because of lack of evidence.
By now, readers of P.D. James know what to expect: a good, fat read, with the central mystery padded out with excursions down byways. As I was reading, I wondered whom she reminded me of, and I thought: "Maybe C.P. Snow?" Something to do with the initials? More than that. The measured, would-be profundities, the hushed, corridors-of-power touches, the stilted dialogue, the endurance to force out a good story: all of these and more.
For there is no doubt she rises above the tag of genre fiction, her character drawing being precise and detailed, her themes insightful and universal. A Certain Justice may be a novel of suspense, but it is also well able to stand its ground with what passes for literary fiction. If you need evidence, just cast a glance back over last year's Booker shortlist.
Vincent Banville is a freelance journalist and writer
