SOURCE: "Look, No Handcuffs," in Spectator, October 29, 1994, pp. 39, 41.

In the following review, Waugh lauds James for "deliver[ing a tightly woven plot, with no unnecessary digressions" in Original Sin.]

What a relief! The mooning poet, uninterested in murder, of Devices and Desires, is hardly glimpsed in P. D. James' new novel, Original Sin. Instead she delivers a tightly woven plot, with no unnecessary digressions.

Chief Inspector Adam Dalgleish and his team are called in to investigate the death of Gerard Etienne, the good-looking, hard-nosed chairman of the old-fashioned, privately owned publishing house. Peverell Press. It is not initially clear (except to the reader who can see it coming) whether Gerard's death is murder or accident, although Dalgleish does know that the firm is already contending with the suicide of one of its editors and a malicious practical joker out to embarrass the company and make it look incompetent...