SOURCE: "Hanging Out With Higgins," in London Review of Books, Vol. 11, No. 23, December 7, 1989, pp. 18-9.

In the following excerpt, Wood asserts that James's Devices and Desires "is a thriller and a detective novel."

P. D. James's new novel[, Devices and Desires,] seems to return us straight to Auden's theology [as set out is his essay 'The Guilty Vicarage' in which he asserts that thrillers are more serious than detective fiction]. It is set in rural East Anglia, and takes its title from the Anglican prayer book: 'We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.' A psychopath called the Whistler is on the loose, killing young women. Then the haughty and handsome female administrator of a nuclear power station is murdered. Has the Whistler struck again, or has he found a disciple...