Customer Rating: 
Summary: Not her best
Comment: Not P. D. James at her best. The ending was predictable from early on but the story has some interesting twists that make it enjoyable.
Customer Rating: Summary: Never a disappointment!
Comment: P.D. James is never a disappointment. I was thrilled to see that she had created yet another case for us to share with Adam. Ms. James's writing is such a pleasure to enjoy. So many newer writers simply cannot put a sentence together; they make you feel like you're reading something by a struggling high school student. Not so with P.D. James -- ever! She is one of the best, and I enjoyed every bit of "The Private Patient." I do wish she had explained why Rhoda "had no further use" for her scar. I don't feel that this was ever explained. Other than that, it was terrific.
Customer Rating: Summary: Absolute Psychological Mystery
Comment: It's hard for me to believe that P.D. James can continue to write her sophisticated mysteries with the same depth and nuance as she has for years. She is in her 80's and her descriptions of the landscape, the murder locations and the characters retain a solid introspection and clarity. I have read many of her novels and Private Patient did not disappoint me.
Her main character grabbed my interest from the very beginning. Rhoda Gradwyn, an investigative journalist, decides to finally undergo plastic surgery for a very visible facial scar which was given to her by her father when she was a young girl. Rather than allow the scar to ruin her life, she became a successful journalist uncovering weaknesses and foibles in business and creative society. Why she exactly decided to have plastic surgery performed was not really crystal clear which seemed to be the only great weakness in the novel.
Two murders were enacted in Cheverell Manor, which is a private clinic owned by a prominent plastic surgeon. Among the cast of characters is the staff of the Manor, Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team and peripheral family and friends who are important to the plot. While mixing history of a 350 year old lynching and present day mental challenges, James weaves her tale with depth and intimacy.
We do get inside of some of the characters - not quite enough to know all about them, but quite enough to believe their motives.
I found the denouement was obvious but the character study and illusions sustained my interest from the first page.
Customer Rating: Summary: Latest P.D. James
Comment: I was anticipating reading this book, but was disappointed. While the plot and writing were good as always, the characters seemed not to come to life, to be uninteresting and unexciting, even when showing emotion (which was rare).
Customer Rating: Summary: Although this book was a page-turner, ultimately, there were too many irrelevant story lines.
Comment: I won't go into the story line, since so many others have done that. Instead, I'll focus on why I gave this book four stars instead of five. Basically, it had to do with the ending, which went on and on because of the extra plot lines.
Essentially, I think the book would have been improved by editing out irrelevant story lines. The book felt inadequately edited, but someone as successful as PD James is unlikely to experience the expert editing that can improve a book, compared with the editing that a book by a less well known writer usually undergoes.
I thought just about everything relating to Emma could have been deleted -- including the visit to her father, visit to Dalgleish, crime committed against friend, etc. It simply was irrelevant to the story, which was fairly complicated as it was, given the number of characters, each with a potential motive for murder and background story. This would have shortened the book by 30-40 pages and tightened up the story -- but even more important, the author could then have ended after the climax to the murder mystery, and not with all these additional short chapters trying to tie up all the loose ends. I also particularly hate the mysteries where someone has to explain -- in a long speech or letter -- exactly what happened, because the author doesn't find another way to make this clear to the reader.
I also thought there was a not-so-subtle anti-religous polemic that kept turning up, which could also have been edited out. I really didn't care what the characters felt about God, religion, the Church of England, etc., and yet I kept hearing about it. And all the opinions were pretty much the same, which I suspect are the views of the author. She's welcome to her views, but this was not the platform for expressing them.
But -- it was definitely a page turner.
