Breakaway Books

Authored by P.D. James; Published 1962; Mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️

Cover Her Face is the type of old school mystery that feels like the exact opposite of modern day police procedurals. There’s very little in the way of fancy forensics or high speed chases—just careful interviews to piece together a puzzle.

In Cover Her Face, the Maxie family’s new maid, unwed mother Sally Jupp, is discovered dead the day after the local church fair. It just so happens that Sally had unceremoniously dumped a heap of chaos on the family the previous evening by announcing that the Maxie family scion Stephen had proposed to her. Because of her pronouncement, it appears that nearly every member of the family had a motive to kill her–but who actually did? Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is on the case.

This mystery feels like it’s from another era, where the vast majority of the investigation is simply… interviews. No fingerprints, no dangerous encounter with the villain where the detective just barely escapes with his life. It doesn’t feel pulse-pounding so much as it feels like an extended brain teaser. It’s certainly a good one: virtually every character with a motive for murder and lots of different lies wrapped together to be teased apart by an expert detective. I do find it interesting that, in spite of the fact that this is the first of a series meant to feature DCI Dalgliesh, he doesn’t stand out as the biggest presence in the novel.

Strangely, the character that looms the largest in this book is the victim. It’s not often that I read a mystery where it isn’t the murderer or the detective who stands out the most. But Sally is a controversial lady, and much of the plot seems to hang on just how much of a trickster she is. As the plot unravels, it is revealed just how many people she has deceived and how that has sealed her fate. At times, it does feel like victim blaming and more than a little uncomfortable, but mostly, it just seems like Sally is an intelligent and opaque woman who enjoys, as the characters repeatedly proclaim, “playing” with the people around her. 

Cover Her Face is a mystery to pick up, slow down, and try to work out for yourself before DCI Dalgliesh solves it for you. If that’s the type of mystery you enjoy, you’ll love it!