[P. D.] James's Death of an Expert Witness is quite possibly her best book: certainly the characters are the most credible, the writing is the most controlled (after a slight lapse in The Black Tower), and the sense of rhythm is the most subtle. There is an unexplained red herring early on and the reader is told a little too clearly that the solution is buried in the past, in a scene in which a scientific officer examines a coerolith, the skeleton of a microorganism from ancient seas now found in the chalk of East Anglia. But all else is perfect….

Adam Dalgliesh is a sensitive, keenly intelligent officer from Scotland Yard whose growth is palpable from book to book; he is also a poet, and Miss James convinces us that he is a good one without making the mistake of giving us any of his poetry. He...