Cover Her Face starts with an introduction to the characters and establishing motives to kill the victim, who in this case is Sally Jupp, a housemaid who likes to keep secrets. Sally is an unwed mother (scandalous!!!) who has been given a job with the Maxies. The morning after Dr. Stephen Maxie proposes to her, she is found dead in her room, brutally strangled, and possibly drugged.

Call in Inspector Adam Dalgleish to root out the doer of this dastardly deed! There is a locked door, a missing bottle of pills, a moved ladder, a houseful of suspects, and a few suspects that aren't in the house but still have motives for Sally's death. There are some red herrings and a lot of surprises.

This book was thoroughly enjoyable. It's the second PD James book that I've read (the first is Original Sin) and it was fun. The author delves into the minds of all the characters, even the murderer, though you can't tell who did it. When the final unveiling happened, I thought to myself, "I knew it!" Of course, I had been convinced at one time or another of the guilt of everyone in the book, and at the end, I was leaning toward another person, but still...

After all the praise P.D. James has received, I wanted to give her books a try. I began at the beginning with her first novel. Cover Her Face is a pretty good read, but lets through that it is an early work of the author. The story entails one crime only, the murder of the house-maid. No other cases or even significant side stories of the main characters are present. This makes the novel differ from many more recent mysteries I have read. Fortunately, the ending is a surprise.
The book often describes events and actions instead of letting the reader actively live them through dialogue. As a result, I didn't really feel drawn into the story. We also don't learn very much about what type of person the main character, Inspector Dalgliesh, is. Not may clues are given as to his style of solving crimes or his personality in general. I am hopeful that I will get to know him better in the following books in the series.

This has to be her worst novel. The characterization of the victim is so poorly developed and unbelievable that it is almost ludicrous. It seems the victim played with people's feelings and that eventually leads to her death. In fact, it seemed to me that James read lot of Christie and wrote this mish-mash as a tribute, perhaps?

I must confess to never really being a P. D. James fan. Several years ago I began to read one of her books (can't remember which one) and found it so dull that I put it down and didn't read another of her works for many years. Figuring that her first book might be a bit more easily read I picked it up, and enjoyed it very much. It's rather the typical English murder mystery that was being published in the '50s and '60s, when this one was written. It involves a murder at the home of relatively wealthy folks, with a locked door mystery, and abundant suspects. The ending was the usual "gather all the suspects into one room and have the detective unravel the crime scenario for them". Even though it is typical, she did put a bit of her own spin on the tale, and that's probably what made it stand out at the time of publishing. There's really nothing in it to make one think that this writer was a great new talent, but it is enjoyable none the less.

This is the first book in the series that has made PD James the first name in British mysteries. It sets the tone for the books that will follow and you will be eager to see Adam Dalgliesh develop into Scotland Yard's ace detective. So I would recommend that you start your adventures with Adam here at the beginning.