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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780345430571
ISBN number: 0345430573
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 448
Printing Date: October 31, 1998
Publishing house: Ballantine Books
Release Date: October 31, 1998
Sale Popularity Level: 622010
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
When distinguished criminal lawyer Venetia Aldridge defends a young man for the brutal murder of his mother, she views the case as simply another opportunity to demonstrate her brilliance in the courtroom. But within weeks of the trial Aldridge is found dead at her desk, a bloodstained barrister’s wig on her head. And as Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard attempts to make sense of events, the murders continue, inexorably spiraling into fresh complexities of horror.
“Shocking . . . fascinating . . . A Certain Justice sucks the reader in right from the dramatic very first line.”
–Los Angeles Times
“This is a P. D. James case to shiver through and revel in–dark page by dark page.”
–Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Enthralling . . . [P. D. James’s] stories always captivate.”
–Associated Press
“Taut, suspenseful, and deeply penetrating.”
–Baltimore Sun
“Gripping.”
–The Wall Street Journal
“A compelling tale of pride, deceit, and revenge.”
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Amazon.com Review:
Although A Certain Justice begins with news of a murder, the victim isn't set to die for another four weeks. Publicly respected but privately loathed, Venetia Aldridge has far more enemies than a brilliant London criminal lawyer should--and at least one of them is determined to do her in. Venetia plies her superior trade in courts that harbor 'the illusion that the passions of men were susceptible to order and control,' but her past and private life are exceedingly unruly. Her married lover is intent on giving her up; her daughter loathes her; her fellow barristers are determined that she not become the subsequent head of chambers. Even the cleaning women seems to have something on her.
The outline alone of this complex novel would take pages (as would the eclectic inventory of players), but P. D. James makes us admire far more than her brilliantly developed plot. James in fact creates a crowded gallery of surprisingly decent suspects, along with one suitably vile creature--who happens to be Aldridge's last client.
A superior murder mystery, A Certain Justice is also a gripping anatomy of wild justice. James's characters can be overcome by hate, but she is equally concerned with love's manifestations--human, divine, destructive, and healing.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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I've read most of James' Dalgliesh mysteries and this was by far my least favorite. Which is not to say that it wasn't good - I have yet to read a P.D. James mystery that isn't engaging and well written. It's just to say that compared to her other mysteries, this one was lacking. It seemed like the main plot (the death of a criminal attorney) was lost in the subplot about the attorney's daughter. The denouement of the subplot was great, in my opinion (well-paced, exciting), but the denouement of the main plot seemed tacked on. The impression I have is that James wrote a draft of the book in which one character was the murderer but decided that was too facile or something, rewrote the ending and added scenes in the beginning and middle so that a different character was now the murderer. It feels like the daughter-sub-plot denouement was meant to be the end of the book and the resolution of the central murder feels tacked on. However, just because I was disappointed that it wasn't quite as complete and satisfying as the rest of the Dalgliesh series, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. If it were written by someone else, I would have given it 4 stars, but I know that James is capable of a more satisfying book.
Rated by buyers 
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The story line is great with a really surprising twist at the end. My experience was not that of reading the book but rather listening to the book. Michael Jayston, narrator, is wonderful. His presentation of the author's words makes the characters come to life. It's an enjoyable story. Good for a long car trip.
Rated by buyers 
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Another extremely long P D. James novel, of the sort she has been writing since A Taste for Death, with more emphasis on loving descriptions of room interiors and architecture than on an ingenious puzzle plot. Here the plot if especially disappointing, with one element evidently borrowed from Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution (the eyeglasses of the trial witness) and very little emphasis on ratiocination on the part of her detectives. Part of the solution is handed to Dalgleish in a confession, the rest he obtains by sheer guesswork, as other reviews have pointed out. The final explanation is one of the most improbable, uninspired fizzles in her work. James might as well have selected the killer randomly.
Do characterization and writing compensate for the poor puzzle? Frankly, no. The opening situation is the standard business where an unlikeable person, in this care the lawyer Venetia Aldridge, goes around giving an implausibly large number of people some reason to kill her. After she is finally slain, Dalgleish and his team show up and ask a lot of questions, but get nowhere. Eventually there is a confession to one element, then a long thrill section where a killer is pursued (this reads like James was writing it for the inevitable television adaptation). Then Dalgleish pulls the ultimate solution out of his hat. Along the way, we get a lot of characters, but very few of them are developed (despite all the verbiage). Venetia herself, who starts off as an interesting character, becomes almost an afterthought after her murder. We also get James' usual social observations, with an occasional conservative sentiment concerning the decline of religion or the rise of political correctness, but none of this really adds up to an interesting novel.
Earlier James novels like A Mind to Murder and Shroud for a Nightingale, written at a time when Agatha Christie and Nagio Marsh were still alive, show much great ingenuity with plot and have good writing and characterization as well. James' novels for the last twenty years are much longer yet less satisfying.
Rated by buyers -
This book illustrates an exciting era where meritocracy, equality, tradition and status quo collide with one another each with undeniable force and most unequivocally where the idea of "tyranny of majority" put forward by an English author John Stuart Mill is viciously challenged by an idea put forward by Korean psychology experts who believe "the tyrannized minority is giving people above them what they want because those below believe that they 'know' what those traditionally held power want." P.D. James' courageous publication of such a fact pattern in fiction form in this book offers simultaneously bone chilling suspense as well as refreshingly gratifying relief. This book reminds me that it is appropriate to pray that God grants each of us the courage to disagree, be different and be the person God meant us to be by shedding hautiness developed from certain associations inflicting in some perilous projection and dull mind.
Rated by buyers -
Like most of James's books, this one was a bit slow to start. There are a bunch of characters all introduced and it takes a bit of time to sort them all out. And, I admit, I thought the middle of this story dragged a bit more than a lot of the others. It just didn't grab me in quite the same way, perhaps because I had no feelings one way or the other about many of the characters - including the deceased. Still, the story came together in the end, even though it was a little bit of a stretch plot-wise. Not the type of mystery you're likely to be able to solve yourself, with all the odd twists and turns. But it was those odd twists that, in the end, kept it interesting.
It's worth reading, but not the best P.D. James book by a long shot. Two better ones that leap to mind, for me, are The Murder Room and The Lighthouse.
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