SOURCE: "A Detective in Spite of Himself," in New York Times Book Review, January 28, 1990, pp. 1, 31.

In the following review, Crist lauds James's vivid characters, evocation of place, and risk-taking in Devices and Desires.

Her newest mystery, Devices and Desires, is P. D. James at better than her best.

That this British writer has long transcended classification as a writer of books of mystery and detection goes without saying. That she is a first-class novelist has come clear over some 30 years and is reaffirmed by her 11th work. What "gives any mystery writer the claim to be regarded as a serious novelist," she wrote in 1983, is "the power to create [a] sense of place and to make it as real to the reader as his own living room—and then to people it with characters who are suffering men and women, not stereotypes to be knocked down like dummies...