The Lighthouse is vintage P.D. James; if you like her other novels, you’ll enjoy this one. The victim is a nasty old author who’s losing his touch. The murderer is the last person you’d expect to be it. The suspects are psychologically interesting and individualistic. Adam Dalgliesh, James’s Scotland Yard detective, is still struggling with his own inner demons and in The Lighthouse he encounters serious danger to his own person as he investigates murder on an isolated island far from the usual conveniences of the Yard and its myriad of technological and human assistants.

I love the Adam Dalgliesh mysteries, but I do wish that Inspector Dalgliesh and his love interest, Emma, would go ahead and tie the knot, for goodness sakes. They’re running out of time. Like Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, they need to get over all these doubts and second thoughts and get on with it. Thank goodness, in The Lighthouse P.D. James moves them to the brink of matrimonial commitment.

All in all, The Lighthouse is about the setting, the victim, the suspects, and the detectives. The murderer is almost an afterthought. It’s a satisfying mystery with lots of well-developed and intriguing characters. In fact, as a good measure of the success of Ms. James’s characterizations, I’d like to know what happens to several of her characters after the story is over. Happily, some of them– Inspector Kate Miskin, Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith, Emma, and Adam Dalgliesh himself— are likely to reappear in P.D. James’s next novel. I do hope she’s working on the next novel.

P.D. James’s choices for “most riveting crime novels.”