James's strengths as a writer include the realism of her characters, her clear and carefully delineated plots, her deep psychological penetration, and her sense of place. In an interview with Patricia Craig for the Times Literary Supplement in 1981, she stated that for her, place is of utmost importance.

This, rather than plot or characters, is often the starting point for her novels.

She uses only places that she knows well, and describes them in picturesque and often poetic detail. In Innocent Blood, she takes the reader from London's more fashionable suburbs, on trains and in crowded underground stations, to the streets and shops of London's many districts, to the parks and markets, up the stairs of a dingy flat where she examines every corner, then into cheap hotels and seedy restaurants, into church services and prisons — all with remarkable clarity and detail. It is this sense of...