The Private Patient
By PD James
Penguin £7.99, 512 pages
FT Bookshop price: £6.39

Formidable investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn checks into Cheverell Manor, the beautiful home and private clinic of plastic surgeon Chandler-Powell. He removes the facial scar inflicted in childhood by Gradwyn’s drunken father. During the night, she is strangled.

As in the best country house murders, Commander Adam Dalgliesh’s interviews quickly unearth plenty of plausible motives. A nurse desperate to make more of her clandestine affair with the disdainful Chandler-Powell, and Westhall, an assistant surgeon resentful of the vanity underpinning their surgery, are both aware of how much a death at the clinic would damage its owner. Westhall’s cousin, a failed actor with a parasitic connection to Gradwyn, stays nearby – until his body is found in a freezer, twisting Dalgliesh’s inquiry in a new direction.

James’s skill as a yarn-spinner gives plenty of suspense to this intriguing mystery.