LAYING DOWN THE LAW

P.D. JAMES DOES JUSTICE TO ANOTHER CHILLY ENGLISH MYSTERY

Author: By Gail Caldwell, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, November 16, 1997

Page: L1

Section: Books

Of course, the British master P. D. James has always presumed that murder is a dish served cold by necessity -- and that the knife belongs in a desolate patch of weeds somewhere, not sparkling innocuously in the cutlery drawer. The grim world of her detective novels, by now spanning more than three decades, has taken the savage heart from the homicidal maniac and placed it within each of us -- creating a much murkier realm to navigate, its crimes harder to set right. But more important than the twilight milieu of her novels have been James's dense, exquisite characterizations: fallible cops and robbers and schoolmasters and housecleaners, drawn from London's streets and hearths with the care of a poet and the precision of a forensic pathologist.

No accident, that; James spent years working in the police and criminal-law divisions of the British Civil Service, where she surely learned as much about evidentiary procedure as she did about the labyrinths of the human heart. Her legendary Commander Adam Dalgliesh, of New Scotland Yard, is no stranger to either: critically acclaimed poet, enigmatically heartbroken man, crack investigator. Dalgliesh has been missing, in spirit or actual presence, in the last few of James's novels; in ``A Certain Justice,'' he's in charge of the hunt, and that makes an already good novel all the better.

``A Certain Justice'' is deeply satisfying, and not just because it has a meticulously crafted momentum and a fairly captivating crime at its center. It is because James takes the time to compose those signature-rhythmic descriptions -- ``The great horse chestnut was still weighted with the heaviness of high summer'' -- and because she gives her Dalgliesh a welcome gravitas, including the capacity to feel briefly ``that soul-possessing joy which is so seldom felt once youth has passed.'' This is poetic wisdom, not mere plot contrivance, and it suffuses the novel with a substance far more lasting than who done what to whom.

Which, as we learn soon enough, concerns the diabolically clever murder of a barrister in her office at Middle Temple in London's courts. Venetia Aldridge -- Oxford-educated, divorced, the unhappy mother of an unhappy 18-year-old, Olivia -- is a formidable criminal lawyer; her acquittal rate puts most of her colleagues to shame, though she herself rarely has time for such retrospective emotions. Her only goal is victory; her loyalty is to the law and its intricate corridors of possibility. The people she represents -- more often than not, perpetrators of heinous crimes -- are the pawns on her chess board, rarely worthy of a backward glance or a moral hesitation. ``She was a very fine lawyer,'' co-workers tell the police, again and again, at a loss for any other descriptor. ``Being difficult in Chambers is practically an art form,'' says one man, apologetically. ``Venetia brought it to a higher pitch than most.''

So: It's Colonel Mustard in the library, in other words, because all those with keys to Venetia Aldridge's chambers had reason to consider themselves better off without her: Drysdale Laud, her rival for the next Head of Chambers; Simon Costello, whose shady past had just been discovered by Aldridge; the secretary and clerk who are both soon to be let go; even the cleaning lady, whose family had once crossed paths with Aldridge in court. Oh, and leave us not forget the woman's personal life, if it could be called as much: She was sleeping, on and off, with a married MP before her death, and she had just learned that her latest court acquittal -- a probable murderer named Garry Ashe -- had seduced and was planning to marry her daughter. With a home life like that, who wouldn't spend all her time at the office?

Each of these connections offers its own morass of motive and opportunity, of human failure and sorrow and deceit, and their collective stories provide the depth and pathos of ``A Certain Justice.'' James has crafted these characters so fully that even the icy Venetia Aldridge feels knowable and sympathetic by the time of her death; the less central people in the novel, from the lovable Head of Chambers to Aldridge's old mentor (an eccentric nicknamed the Frog), are realized in no less detail. But James saves the moral center of her novel for Dalgliesh and his two assistants, the affable Piers Tarrant and the now-familiar Kate Miskin -- a self-made cop with a tough past behind her and a strength as reliable as the sun.

If hardly as bright: Part of the allure of James's multi-shadowed fiction is that you know the crime will be solved well and in good time, but the puzzle is only the scaffolding for a psychologically abundant tale. Oh that, you think, remembering the murder; you've gotten lost, in the meantime, in the cruel hallways of little Venetia's childhood, or wandered into the fastidious quarters of Miss Elkington's Domestic Agency. There are even luxurious moments of simple pleasure, as when a gardening columnist, neighbor to another murder victim, breaks down during police questioning -- and confesses to fabricating her entire perfect garden.

But mostly the world is filled with more hurtful crimes: lies told and then forgotten; children gone unloved; old wounds tended with vengeance instead of mercy. These are the injustices without balm or resolution; they linger in the rooms of ``A Certain Justice'' long after its more obvious misdeeds have been categorized or laid to rest. No sweet-talker or nihilist, either one, P. D. James knows exactly what to do with a gun in her fiction, and what to do with a priest. The action of the first is swift and ineradicable; the reach of the second is vast and larger even than violence. That's the meeting place where terror runs into mercy, and it requires a level-headed, near-perfect ambiguity to have the courage to be witness to both.

There came into her mind for no reason she could imagine snatches of another conversation she had had with Piers about his curious choice of academic subject. She wondered now at his patience under her questioning.

``What does this theology do for you? After all, you spent three years on it. Teach you how to live? Answer some of the questions?''

``What questions?''

``The big questions. The ones there's no sense in asking. Why are we here? What happens when we die? Have we really free will? Does God exist?''

``No, it doesn't answer questions. It's like philosophy, it tells you what questions to ask.''

``I know what questions to ask. It's the answers I'm after. And what about learning how to live? Isn't that philosophy too? What's yours?''

The reply had come easily but, she had thought, with honesty: ``To get as much happiness as I can. Not to harm others. Not to whine. In that order.''

P.D. JAMES, from ``A Certain Justice''