AUTHORS & THEIR CATS: P.D. JAMES

Happy Caturday! Today I'm continuing my Authors & their Cats feature. Here's a great photo of mystery author P.D. James and her cat!

DALGLIESH SEASON 2

Dalgliesh, Season 2, premieres April 24, on AcornTV, with a new episode/story every Monday through May 8. O.k., sadly that's only 3 - 2 part episodes. Set in 1970s England, Series 2 features DCI Adam Dalgliesh (Bertie Carver) solving unusual murders adapted from P.D. James' mysteries Death of an Expert Witness, A Certain Justice, and The Murder Room. The series continues with Carvel as Dalgliesh and Carlyss Peer as his assistant, DS Kate Miskin. And, I've heard rumors that Season 3 is in the works. I certainly hope so.

Season 1 of Dalgliesh is still available on AcornTV, if you want to catch up. 

P.D. James is one of my favorite writers, and I suggest you read the Dalgliesh series, starting with Cover Her Face. Each novel is fabulous. Great plots, strong characters, wonderful settings. P.D. James is a terrific writer and plotter. 

DALGLIESH: New series on AcornTV starts November 1

Dalgliesh is returning to our screens in a brand new adaptation for Channel 5 and Acorn TV. The six-part series is based on the detective series of novels by P. D. James and sees Bertie Carvel in the title role as the enigmatic detective Adam Dalgliesh.

The fictional detective has appeared on TV many times before, most famously portrayed by Roy Marsden in a string of stories for ITV.

Dalgliesh, makes its worldwide premiere on Monday, November 1, 2021 on Acorn TV.

Adapted from celebrated author P.D. James' bestselling murder novels Adam Dalgliesh Mystery, this intriguing new crime drama stars Bertie Carvel (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Doctor Foster) as the titular, enigmatic detective and poet in three, two-part mysteries - each featuring its own unique setting and extraordinary cast. 

Shroud for a Nightingale - Episode One Nov 1, 2021 

Shroud for a Nightingale - Episode Two Nov 1, 2021 

The Black Tower - Episode One  November 8, 2021

The Black Tower - Episode Two Nov 8, 2021 

A Taste for Death - Episode One  Nov 15, 2021 

A Taste for Death - Episode Two Nov 15, 2021

Dalgliesh: New TV series in 2021

Last Tuesday night our mystery book group discussed a P.D. James novel. P.D. James is one of my favorite authors, and, needless to say, I've read all of her novels -- some more than once. I enjoyed the Roy Marsden portrayal of Adam Dalgliesh in the ITV productions in the 80s and 90s (still available to stream). 

Now, Acorn TV and Channel 5 are teaming up to adapt the Dalgliesh stories by P.D. James yet again! James wrote 14 novels featuring Adam Dalgliesh between 1962 and 2008. The first season of the crime drama series will comprise of two-part adaptations of Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, and A Taste for Death.  

Bertie Carvel will play Detective Chief Inspector Dalgliesh. The 43-year-old English actor is best known for his roles in Doctor Foster, The Crown, The Pale Horse, and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Dalgliesh will begin in 1970s England, following Dalgliesh’s career as he solves unusual murders and reveals buried secrets.

Channel 5’s Deputy Director of Programmes, Sebastian Cardwell commented: “P.D. James was one of Britain’s great crime writers and we’re incredibly excited to be creating new adaptations of her work.”

Executive producer Elaine Pyke added: “It’s a great honour to bring these much loved detective mysteries to life for fans of the books but also for new audiences. We are incredibly excited by the talent they are attracting and the opportunity to work with Acorn TV and Channel 5.”

Dalgliesh will premiere in 2021 on Acorn TV in the US and and on Channel 5 in the UK.

Sad news: P.D. James: R.I.P.

 Sad news, indeed. Author P.D. James died peacefully at her home in Oxford this morning. She was 94.  Obituary below. Watch a recent interview with P.D. James (April 2014).


 
From The Guardian:

Her debut novel, Cover Her Face (1962), was snapped up by the first publisher to set eyes on the manuscript, launching a career that advanced in parallel with that of her fictional police officer, Chief Inspector Dalgliesh. As he found himself promoted to superintendent and then to commander, so James accumulated a host of awards including the Crime Writers’ Association’s Diamond Dagger and the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster award. Many of the Dalgliesh novels were subsequently filmed for television, with Roy Marsden taking the role of the investigator.
James also won a good number of public honours, eventually finding herself elevated to the House of Lords in 1991, where she sat with the Conservatives.
Born in 1920, James left school at 16 to follow her father into a career in the Inland Revenue. She married Ernest White at 21 and moved to London, giving birth to two daughters as German bombers pounded the British capital. Her husband returned from the war with mental health problems, leaving James to provide for her young family by working in hospital administration. With her daughters at boarding school and her husband in hospital, evenings become devoted to writing.
It had always been her “intention” to become a writer, and she began writing about a detective partly as an apprenticeship for writing “serious” novels, as she explained to the Paris Review in 1994. James had always loved crime novels, was unwilling to explore the “traumatic experiences” of her own life in fiction and was well aware it would be easier to find a publisher for a detective story. But the genre also appealed to her taste for order.

“I like structured fiction, with a beginning, a middle, and an end,” she said. “I like a novel to have narrative drive, pace, resolution, which a detective novel has.”
Published in 1962, Cover Her Face opens “exactly three months before the killing”, with a country-house dinner party which becomes, “in retrospect, a ritual gathering under one roof of victim and suspects, a staged preliminary to murder”. The new parlourmaid announces her engagement to the manor house’s eldest son at the village fete and is strangled the following night, a mystery resolved by the refined poet-detective Dalgliesh. “I gave him the qualities I admire,” James explained in 2001, “because I hoped he might be an enduring character and that being so, I must actually like him.”Read more HERE.

Watch an interview with P.D. James 

Death Comes to Pemberley Twitter Event

Death Comes to Pemberley starts this Sunday night on PBS's Masterpiece! This wonderful homage to Austen is adapted from P.D. James's mystery and stars Anna Maxwell Martin, Matthew Rhys, Mtthew Goode, and Jenna Coleman. 

Join MASTERPIECE for a live Twitter event Sunday, October 26 and Sunday November 2 during the broadcast, 9-10:30 Eastern Time. Of course, you can watch it any time...and you don't have to join the Twitter Event...but it will be fun, and we'd love to have you! I'm one of the hosts, but I may not be able to join on October 26...but I've seen the production, and I'll definitely be there on November 2! Some of my favorite actors, of course, and any and everything Jane Austen is terrific ..and a mystery? well even better!

Here's a link to a scene from Part I. 

Tag you posts with the hashtag #PemberleyPBS using Twitter or your favorite aggregator.

WHAT: PBS and MASTERPIECE are hosting a live Twitter discussion (#PemberleyPBS)

WHEN: Sundays, October 26 and November 2, 2014, 9-11pm Eastern and Pacific time

WHERE: Join us using our hashtag  (#PemberleyPBS).

TOPICS: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, P.D. James, MASTERPIECE Mystery!

WHO: @PBS; @masterpiecepbs; Vintage & Anchor Books (@VintageAnchor); Laurel Ann Nattress (@Austenprose) of Austenprose; Janet Rudolph (@JanetRudolph) of Mystery Readers International – and YOU!

RSVP: Please follow and be followed (on Twitter, of course!) by other #PemberleyPBS tweeters

Death Comes to Pemberley: PBS Masterpiece Mystery!

Death Comes to Pemberley, starring Matthew Rhys, Anna Maxwell Martin and Matthew Goode, and based on the book by P.D. James, premieres Sunday, October 26, 2014, 9pm ET on MASTERPIECE Mystery! on PBS.

 

P.D. James on the Death of the Golden Age of Crime

Great article by P.D. James in the Spectator:  
Who killed the Golden age of Crime

Read it HERE.

Masterpiece Classic: Death Comes to Pemberly

An adaptation of P.D. James's Death Comes to Pemberly, a continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, will air on PBS MASTERPIECE in 2014.

Matthew Rhys (The Americans, Brothers and Sisters), Anna Maxwell Martin (Bleak House), Matthew Goode (Birdsong), and Jenna-Louise Coleman (Doctor Who) will star as Austen's iconic literary characters: Fitzwilliam Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, George Wickham, and Lydia Wickham.

Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Award Winner: Lee Child

Lee Child, British creator of the Jack Reacher series,  won the 2011 Theakstons Old Peculier crime novel of the year award for the 14th installment in his bestselling series, 61 Hours.
Speaking after Thursday's award ceremony, which opened the Harrogate crime writing festival,  Lee Child said it was "a thrill" to receive the £3,000 award. "I remember when I was writing 61 Hours that I felt it had come out nicely," he said, "but to have the recognition is great."

Read the rest of the article from the Guardian HERE.

Val McDermid introduced P.D. James who received a special award for Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction. There was a standing ovation.

The shortlist for the 2011 Theakstons Old Peculier Award:
From The Dead by Mark Billingham (Sphere)
Blood Harvest by SJ Bolton (Corgi Books)
61 Hours by Lee Child (Bantam Books)
Dark Blood by Stuart MacBride (Harper Fiction)
The Holy Thief by William Ryan (Pan Books)
The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor (Michael Joseph)

Dove Award Winners: P.D. James, Catherine Ross Nickerson

The Popular Culture Association's Detective/Mystery Caucus announced its latest George N. Dove Award recipients for contributions to the serious study of mystery and crime fiction:  P.  D. James and Emory University's Catherine Ross Nickerson,  author of The Web of Iniquity: Early Detective Fiction by American Women, 1998, and editor of the Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction, 2010).

Past winners of the Dove Award include H. R. F. Keating, Crippen & Landru's Douglas G. Greene, University at Albany professor-author Frankie Y. Bailey, and Elizabeth Foxwell.

Hat Tip: Beth Foxwell at The Bunburyist