From the inside flappydoodle:
Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are confronted with a puzzle of baffling complexity. A murder has taken place in the offices of the Peverell Press, a venerable London publishing house located in a dramatic mock-Venetian palace on the Thames. The victim is Gerard Etienne, the brilliant but ruthless new managing director, who had vowed to restore the firm’s fortunes. Etienne was clearly a man with enemies—a discarded mistress, a rejected and humiliated author, and rebellious colleagues, one of whom apparently killed herself a short time before. Yet Etienne’s death, which occurred under bizarre circumstances, is for Dalgliesh only the beginning of the mystery, as he desperately pursues the search for a killer prepared to strike again and again.

Review:
I wouldn’t rank this as one of P. D. James’ best. The writing and characterization are excellent as always, but I had terrible trouble getting into the story at first, on account of her “let’s spend some time on the victim and each suspect before the crime occurs” approach. She’s used this in at least one previous novel that I can recall and I don’t dislike it, necessarily, but in this case it made for slow going. A revelation at the post-mortem provided a much needed injection of excitement, thankfully, and the second half went by much more swiftly.

I was a little disappointed in the conclusion of the case, both so far as motive and some subsequent events were concerned. I am also very confused about the timeline of these novels. Each seems to be more or less set in the year that it was published, but Dalgliesh appears to be rather consistently in his late forties/early fifties. One character states it’s been nine months since an event that occurred two books ago, which means the events of the immediately preceding book, Devices and Desires, took place only weeks before this one. Perhaps I should give up trying to puzzle this out exactly, but it’s irksome when everything else is so tidily done.

From the back cover:
An intriguing assignment, Cordelia Gray thought, and not a particularly arduous one. The poison pen messages to Clarissa Lyle were to be stopped—or at least deflected—until after the performance of The Duchess of Malfi at Ambrose Gorringe’s private theatre on Courcy Island. It soon becomes apparent however that Clarissa Lyle’s enemy is on the island with her, and Cordelia finds herself trapped in an atmosphere of fear and violence—a violence that is to culminate in a brutal murder…

Review:
I really liked the vast majority of The Skull Beneath the Skin. The atmosphere is similar to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, in that a limited number of suspects are staying together on an isolated island, complete with a married pair of somewhat eccentric servants. There were enough creepy or mysterious details to keep the plot moving interestingly, and the characters were well fleshed out, precisely as one would expect from P. D. James. Plus, mysteries with just a few possible killers with whom the protagonist must continue to associate after the act are fun.

Some time after said brutal murder occurs, the narrative focus shifts away from Cordelia to that of the detectives from the town on shore who’ve come to investigate. It’s interesting to learn some details from their interviews, and also to see the way in which they view Cordelia, but I found it a little odd that the protagonist should be absent for such a significant period of time. Eventually, she does regain the spotlight.

I found the whole sequence of events in the conclusion to be somewhat disappointing. A side trip for more nuggets of information bogs down the story, and then some elements of what follows are predictable, though I admit to being surprised by others. It’s not a poor ending, exactly, but for something that started so strongly it’s a bit anticlimactic.

From the back cover:
Handsome Mark Callender did not die the way a well-brought-up young gentleman should. He was found hanging by his neck, a lipstick stain on his mouth and a picture of a nude girl nearby. The official verdict was suicide, but his aristocratic father suspected murder, and hired fledgling detective Cordelia Gray to investigate. As this determined young lady followed a twisting trail of guilty secrets and shameful sins, she soon reached the conclusion that the nicest people do the nastiest things—in a case that proved at every shocking turn to be An Unsuitable Job for a Woman.

Review:
One of the most enjoyable things about P. D. James’ books is that she’s amazing at character snapshots, evocative yet economical, and able to reveal personality even when only discussing their physical attributes. The technique is used more with minor characters—a temporary typist, a curious neighbor—while the history of the detective herself is meted out more gradually.

Cordelia herself is a great character: sensible, resourceful, and focused while still retaining some youthful vulnerability. She cares very much about fulfilling her obligations to her client while also doing right by the victim, for whom she feels strong empathy. Various people remark throughout the book that her occupation is an unsuitable job for a woman, though there is never a moment where Cordelia herself considers this to be so. The last sentence of the blurb above, therefore, is misleading.

There were moments in the story where I thought the investigation was proceeding a little too neatly, that those questioned were persuaded to divulge their information a little too easily. The moments of suspense did not always foster the proper level of concern for the character’s fate, but that may be due in some part to Cordelia’s level-headedness. The actual facts of the case, however, were suitably clever and original, and I enjoyed the book very much over all. It’s a pity that James has only written one other novel featuring Cordelia.