Shining tableau of light, eclipsing the stars, staining the sky with its She would stand at the balcony rail watching the city transform itself into a

Of the river in all its contrasts from first light until dusk. She had always loved the stimulus ofĬontrast and here she could move from the old to the new, surveying the life The still water of ‘West India Dock the Docklands Light Railway with its

From her bedroom she saw the panorama of Canary Wharf, its top like a gigantic pencil Police and the Port of London Authority, the cruise liners making their way

With its incessant traffic-barges, pleasure boats, the launches of the river From the sitting room she looked south-west over the river Her riverside flat was at the end of the building, with a double outlook and But her grandmother was dead, and if the past was not dead and neverĬould be, she had learned painfully over the years to recogniseĪnd accept the best and the worst of what it had done to her. Granddaughter she didn’t want to care for and could hardly bear the pain of Querulous: the death of the daughter she hadn’t wanted to bear, cooped up inĪ high-rise flat where she hadn’t chosen to live, burdened by an illegitimate It wasĪlways with relief that she would hear her grandmother’s frail and querulous High-rise, the balcony rail trembling, then breaking in her hands. Rescue, a plane crashing through the window, an earthquake shattering the Would drag on her clothes at the moment of waking, desperate to be ready toĬope with the expected disaster: a fire in one of the flats below preventing It was partly by choice, partly a legacy of herĬhildhood, when, burdened with the daily dread of imagined catastrophe, she Office and, even on a rest day, showered, clothed and breakfasted. Normally, long before this hour, she would have been at her In her flat above the Thames, Detective Inspector Kate Miskin

Detective Inspector Kate Miskin and Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith join Dalgliesh on the island, and work together to solve the Leaves behind office work that he’s glad to delegate, and Emma, whom he Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called on to investigate the murder of aĪn exclusive refuge off the Cornish coast. I enjoyed each page to the end, thanks to her fine writing. Guessed the murderer during the first half of P.D.

The lighthouse book pd james