The British author P(hyllis) D(orothy) James (born 1920) wrote in the tradition of the British crime storyteller, but her extensive explorations of relationships, motivations, and meanings of justice classified her, in the opinion of some, as a novelist.

P. D. James--Queen of Crime, Mistress of Murder, OBE (Order of the British Empire), baroness, and grandmother--was born Phyllis Dorothy James on August 3, 1920, in Oxford, England, the oldest of three children. Her parents, Sidney Victor, a tax official, and Dorothy May (Hone) James, moved the family to Cambridge, where James attended the Cambridge High School for Girls. One of this century's foremost crime novelists had to leave school at age 16 to work in a tax office, followed by a stint as assistant stage manager for the Festival Theatre in Cambridge. (Her own play A Private Treason was staged in 1985 in London's West End.)

During World War II she worked...