A Certain Justice (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Dieser Titel ist in englischer Sprache.
"Mörder pflegen sich normalerweise nicht vorher anzumelden. Mord ist eine Todesart, bei der dem Opfer, ungeachtet der grauenvollen Erkenntnis in letzter Sekunde, die Schrecken und Ängste im Vorfeld gnädig erspart bleiben." In der Tat ereilt der Tod die Staranwältin Venetia Aldridge überraschend an einem ruhigen Abend in ihrem Büro mit einem spitzen Brieföffner.

Commander Dagliesh beginnt seine Ermittlungen und übereinstimmend erklären alle Bekannten und Kollegen der Toten, daß sie eine hervorragende Juristin war. Keiner war mit ihr befreundet oder hatte gar privaten Kontakt zu ihr.

Zug um Zug deckt die Polizei eine Vielzahl verschiedener Facetten der Lebensumstände Venetias auf, aber schon bald beschleicht Commander Dagliesh der Verdacht, "dieser Fall könne sich zu einem von denen entwickeln, die der Alptraum eines jeden Kriminalisten sind: die Konstellation, in der der Mörder bekannt ist, aber die Beweislage in den Augen des Oberstaatsanwalts für eine strafrechtliche Verfolgung nicht ausreicht. Und obendrein hatten seine Leute es diesmal mit Juristen zu tun, mit ausgefuchsten Anwälten, die besser als der Durchschnittsbürger wußten, daß es den Kopf kosten konnte, wenn einer sich nicht darauf verstand, den Mund zu halten."

Bei diesem neuen, ihrem vierzehnten Roman erweist sich P. D. James als wirkliche Queen of crime, denn sie gibt jeder ihrer Figuren, sei es die Putzfrau oder der geschiedenen Mann des Opfers, eine eigene Geschichte. A Certain Justice zählt mit Sicherheit zu den besten Thrillern des Frühjahres 1999. --Manuela Haselberger

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Obwohl A Certain Justice mit der Nachricht von einem Mord beginnt, findet das Opfer erst vier Wochen später seinen Tod. Venetia Aldridge wird in der Öffentlichkeit respektiert, insgeheim jedoch von vielen gehaßt und hat viel mehr Feinde als eine Londoner Anwältin für Strafsachen haben sollte -- und zumindest einer dieser Feinde ist fest entschlossen, sie ins Jenseits zu befördern. Venetia geht ihrer Arbeit in höheren Gerichten nach, die "die Illusion" erwecken, "daß menschliche Leidenschaften sich kontrollieren und bändigen lassen". Venetias Vergangenheit und ihr Privatleben sind allerdings ausgesprochen ungeordnet. Ihr verheirateter Liebhaber möchte sie eher heute als morgen verlassen; von ihrer Tochter wird sie gehaßt; ihre Anwaltskollegen setzen alles daran, zu verhindern, daß sie die nächste Vorsitzende der Anwaltskammer wird. Sogar die Putzfrau scheint irgendein Problem mit ihr zu haben.

Allein den Handlungsverlauf dieses komplexen Romans zu umreißen würde Seiten füllen (dasselbe gilt für eine eklektische Liste der handelnden Personen), aber bei P. D. James gibt es mehr zu bewundern als ihre brillant gestrickte Handlung. James gelingt es, eine ganze Galerie überraschend anständiger Verdächtiger zu schaffen, und dazu einen passend finsteren Charakter zu erfinden -- bei dem es sich ausgerechnet um Aldridges letzten Klienten handelt.

A Certain Justice ist nicht nur ein erstklassiger Mordfall, sondern auch eine packende Darstellung wilder Justiz. James' Charaktere mögen vom Haß überwältigt werden, aber in gleicher Weise kommt bei James auch die Liebe zum Zug -- menschlich, göttlich, zerstörerisch und heilend.

Auf dem Höhepunkt ihres Schaffens (ihr Potential ist erstaunlich) hat P. D. James ihr bestes Buch seit Innocent Blood geschrieben. Die Ideen, die Energie und die Kunst, die sie in A Certain Justice zur Schau stellt, zeigen andere, jüngere Autoren vielleicht über den Zeitraum ihrer gesamten Karriere. Mit über 70 Jahren verweist James sie mit einem Buch mit offensichtlicher Leichtigkeit in die Schranken.

Das Buch wird als An Adam Dalgliesh Novel ausgewiesen, aber in A Certain Justice überläßt der grüblerische Dichter und Detektiv dem Mordopfer -- der wundervoll komplexen, eigentlich unsympathischen Rechtsanwältin Venetia Aldridge -- und der gleichermaßen faszinierenden Kate Miskin, seiner fähigen Assistentin, die Bühne. Als Kate über einen anderen jungen Polizeibeamten nachdenkt, "vermutet sie, daß er die Traditionen, die Konventionen der Polizeihierarchie, irgendwie lächerlich, vielleicht sogar ein wenig albern fand. Sie spürte zudem, daß das eine Ansicht war, die AD [Adam Dalgliesh] auf gewisse Weise verstehen konnte, auch wenn er sie nicht teilte. Aber sie konnte ihr Leben nicht so ausrichten, konnte nicht so leichtfertig sein, was ihre Karriere betraf..." A Certain Justice ist die perfekte Kriminalgeschichte, um neue Leser für die enthusiastische Fangemeinde von P. D. James zu gewinnen. Weitere Kunstwerke aus ihrer Feder in Taschenbuchform sind unter anderem The Black Tower (Der schwarze Turm), Death of an Expert Witness (Tod eines Sachverständigen), A Shroud for a Nightingale und An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Ein reizender Job für eine Frau).

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 harbour "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 next head of chambers. Even the cleaning woman 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. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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 next 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. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Four weeks after she's defended Garry Ashe on a charge of murdering his disreputable aunt--in a bravura sequence that provides the most electric opening of any of James's novels--his barrister, brilliant, aloof Venetia Aldridge, is found stabbed to death in her chambers with a paper-knife, a barrister's wig on her head and her corpse soaked in fresh blood. Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his squad naturally suspect Ashe, a plausible sociopath who's improved sufficiently on his acquaintance with Venetia to engage himself to her sadly neglected daughter Octavia Cummins. But Ashe provides an alibi, and Dalgliesh turns to other members of chambers: the retiring head; Venetia's rival to succeed him; the colleague whose jury tampering three years ago Venetia had just discovered; and the doting uncle of that colleague's wife. Under Dalgliesh's patient, tough-minded examination, the junior candidates for tenancy in chambers reveal their own fierce rivalries and fiercely divided motives; so do the clerks, members of the support staff, their families, their ex-spouses, their housemates, until finally a pattern of unspeakable hurt and diabolical revenge begins to emerge. In James's severely Darwinian view of the species, everyone is programmed with memories of traumatic past sufferings, and everyone does whatever it takes to survive. It's left to Dalgliesh and Inspectors Kate Miskin and Piers Tarrant to succor the survivors and count the heavy costs. Even more perfectly than the publishing house in Original Sin (1995), Venetia's law chambers provide James with the ideal arena for her boundlessly compassionate probing of human frailty and for the shivery hope of goodness. (First printing of 250,000; Book-of-the-Month Club selection) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Superbly narrated by Michael Jayston, who is able to portray the different characters through slight accent changes or inflections, this latest James novel is set in the historical heart of the British criminal justice system. It involves well-defined and intense personalities and a huge knowledge of the British justice system. From the bizarre murder of a distinguished criminal trial lawyer in the Middle Temple to the far reaches of the reed beds of the English Channel, the crime scene expands and the action intensifies. This production is an excellent example of effective programming and packaging. Certain to be a hit with James fans. Highly recommended.?Theresa Connors, Arkansas Tech Univ., Russellville
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

YA?Venetia Aldridge, a brilliant barrister, has "four weeks, four hours and fifty minutes left of life." By the time her murder is discovered, readers have not only met most of the suspects, but have also begun to sympathize with whomever might have done her in. Everyone in the victim's life, from her 18-year-old daughter to the retiring head of chambers, from her former lover to the cleaning woman, has cause to have wished her ill. Adam Dalgleish, James's poetry penning sleuth, and his assistants, especially Kate Miskin, investigate the many possible suspects. After much examination of the past and present, the murderer is discovered and A Certain Justice is meted out. As with many of the author's mysteries, psychology and motivation are as important as whodunit and the conundrum presented here is thought-provoking. Much of the action centers around the rebellious daughter and there is a suspense-filled scene in which she and her psychopathic boyfriend try to evade Dalgleish, only to have young Octavia discover that she needs to evade the boyfriend instead. YAs who enjoy James and those ready for a bit of a fright with their English mysteries will surely take to this adventure.?Susan H. Woodcock, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

"P.D. James is an addictive writer, [with] a quality of intelligence, a genuine curiosity about character, and an ability to describe the density of little known lives." --Anita Brookner

"A page-turning journey ... along the darker, twisted byways of human intentions." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A Certain Justice has all James' hallmarks: elegance of language, a stellar sense of place, exquisitely defined characters, and a skillfully rendered tale of moral justice." --The Globe and Mail


"A whacking great whodunit." --The Calgary Sun





From the Trade Paperback edition.

In a masterful new Adam Dalgliesh mystery, P.D. James enters the labyrinthine world of the law, forging a deeply compelling human drama from the complex passions that lie behind both murder and justice. <P>"From the Paperback edition. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Taschenbuch .

P. D. James is the author of fourteen previous books, nine of which have been filmed and broadcast on television. She spent thirty years in various sections of the British Civil Service, including the Police and Criminal Law Departments of the Home Office. She has served as a magistrate and as a governor of the BBC. P. D. James is the recipient of many prizes and honors, and in 1991 was created Baroness James of Holland Park.

Murderers do not usually give their victims notice. This is one death which, however terrible that last second of appalled realization, comes mercifully unburdened with anticipatory terror. When, on the afternoon of Wednesday, 11 September, Venetia Aldridge stood up to cross-examine the prosecution's chief witness in the case of Regina v. Ashe, she had four weeks, four hours and fifty minutes left of life. After her death the many who had admired her and the few who had liked her, searching for a more personal response than the stock adjectives of horror and outrage, found themselves muttering that it would have pleased Venetia that her last case of murder had been tried at the Bailey, scene of her greatest triumphs, and in her favourite court.

But there was truth in the inanity.

Court Number One had laid its spell on her since she had first entered it as a pupil. She had always tried to discipline that part of her mind which she suspected could be seduced by tradition or history, yet she responded to this elegant wood-panelled theatre with an aesthetic satisfaction and a lifting of the spirit which was one of the keenest pleasures of her professional life. There was a rightness about the size and proportions, an appropriate dignity in the richly carved coat of arms above the dais, and the glittering seventeenth-century Sword of Justice suspended beneath it, an intriguing contrast between the witness box, canopied like a miniature pulpit, and the wide dock, in which the accused sat level-eyed with the judge. Like all places perfectly designed for their purpose with nothing wanting, nothing superfluous, it induced a sense of timeless calm, even the illusion that the passions of men were susceptible to order and control. Once from curiosity she had gone into the public gallery and had sat for a minute looking down at the empty court and it had seemed to her that only here, where the spectators sat close-packed, was the air knotted with decades of human terror, hope and despair. And now she was once more in the place where she belonged. She hadn't expected the case to be heard in the Old Bailey's most famous court or to be judged by a High Court Judge, but a previous trial had collapsed and the judge's sittings and court allocation had been reorganized. It was a happy omen. She had lost in Court One, but the memories of defeats there were not bitter. More often she had won.

Today, as always in court, she reserved her gaze for the judge, the jury, the witnesses. She seldom conferred with her junior, spoke to Ashe's solicitor seated in front of her or kept the court waiting even momentarily while she searched in her papers for a note. No defending counsel went into court better prepared. And she rarely glanced at her client, and then, when possible, without too obviously turning her head towards the dock. But his silent presence dominated her mind as she knew it did the court. Garry Ashe, aged twenty-one years and three months, accused of murdering his aunt, Mrs. Rita O'Keefe, by cutting her throat. One clean single slash, severing the vessels. And then the repeated frenzied stabs at the half-naked body. Often, particularly with a murder of great brutality, the accused seemed almost pathetically inadequate in his ordinariness, his air of hapless incompetence at variance with the violent dedication of the deed. But there was nothing ordinary about this accused. It seemed to Venetia that, without turning, she could remember every detail of his face.

He was dark, the eyes sombre under straight thick brows, the nose sharp and narrow, the mouth wide but thin-lipped, unyielding. The neck was long and very slender, giving the head the hieratic appearance of a bird of prey. He never fidgeted, indeed seldom moved, sitting very upright in the centre of the dock, flanked by the attendant officers. He seldom glanced at the jury in their box to his left. Only once, during the prosecution counsel's opening speech, had she seen him look up at the public gallery, his gaze ranging along the rows with a slight frown of disgust, as if deploring the quality of the audience he had attracted, before turning his eyes again to rest them on the judge. But there was nothing tautly anxious about his stillness. Instead he gave the impression of a man accustomed to public exposure, a young princeling at a public entertainment, to be endured rather than enjoyed, attended by his lords. It was the jury, the usual miscellany of men and women assembled to judge him, who looked to Venetia like an oddly assorted group of miscreants herded into the box for sentence. Four of them, in open-necked shirts and jumpers, looked as if they were about to wash the car. In contrast, the accused was carefully dressed in a navy-blue striped suit with a shirt so dazzling that it looked like an advertisement for a washing powder. The suit was well pressed but poorly cut, the over-padded shoulders giving the vigorous young body some of the gangling tenuity of adolescence. It was a good choice, the suit hinting at a mixture of self-respect and vulnerability which she was hoping to exploit.

She had a respect, but no liking, for Rufus Matthews, who was prosecuting. The days of flamboyant eloquence in court were over and had in any case never been appropriate to the prosecution, but Rufus liked to win. He would make her fight for every point gained. Opening the prosecution case, he had recounted the facts with a brevity and an unemphatic clarity which left the impression that no eloquence was necessary to support a case so self-evidently true.

Garry Ashe had lived with his maternal aunt, Mrs. Rita O'Keefe, at 397 Westway for a year and eight months before her death. His childhood had been spent in care, during which he had been placed with eight foster parents between periods in children's homes. He had lived in two London squats and had worked for a time in a bar in Ibiza before moving in with his aunt. The relationship between aunt and nephew could hardly be called normal. Mrs. O'Keefe was in the habit of entertaining a variety of men friends, and Garry was either compelled, or consented, to photograph his aunt and these various men engaged in the sexual act. Photographs which the accused had admitted taking would be shown in evidence.

On the night of the murder, Friday, 12 January, Mrs. O'Keefe and Garry were seen together from six o'clock to nine in the Duke of Clarence public house in Cosgrove Gardens, about one and a half miles from Westway. There was a quarrel and Garry left shortly after nine, saying that he was going home. His aunt, who was drinking heavily, stayed on. At about ten-thirty the licensee refused to serve her any more and she was helped into a taxi by two of her friends. At that time she was drunk but by no means incapable. Her friends judged that she was able to get home on her own. The cab-driver deposited her at Number 397 and watched her enter through the side gate at about ten-forty-five.

At ten minutes past midnight a call was made to the police by Garry Ashe from his aunt's house to say that he had returned from a walk to discover her body. When the police arrived at twelve-twenty they found Mrs. O'Keefe lying on a single divan in the front sitting-room, practically naked. Her throat had been cut and she had been slashed with a knife after death, a total of nine wounds. It was the opinion of the forensic pathologist who saw the body at twelve-forty that Mrs. O'Keefe had died very shortly after her return home. There was no evidence of a break-in, and nothing to suggest that she had been entertaining or expecting a visitor that night.

A smear of blood, later identified as Mrs. O'Keefe's, had been found on the headpiece of the shower above the bath in the bathroom, and two spots of her blood on the stair carpet. A large kitchen knife had been discovered under the privet hedge of a front garden less than a hundred...