There are a number of good things to be said about … P. D. James, but that she is a "new Agatha Christie" is not one of them…. I'm not even sure if James is a "queen of crime," as a further bit of well-meaning puffery proclaims her. However, she is without doubt one of the genre's noblewomen, and if there's anyone her oeuvre does call to mind, it's a fine author whose own place at court is secure: the late Elizabeth Mackintosh, or Josephine Tey….

To my way of thinking, what keeps both James and Tey just beneath the throne, as it were, is their good taste. They both lack that slight edge of eccentricity that enabled Christie to dream up Poirot, Dorothy Sayers (whom James claims as an influence) to concoct Peter Wimsey, or Margery Allingham to delineate Albert Campion. Tey's Alan Grant and James's Adam Dalgliesh...