Books

First edition of the author's first book. Octavo, original green cloth. Lengthily signed by the author on the title page with the added words, "P.D. James He knew with a sudden and heart-lifting certainty that they would meet again. And when that happened the right words would be found." The inscription is the final lines of this novel. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with a touch of shelfwear. Jacket design by Charles Mozley. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. A superior example with a nice inscription from the author. "Cover Her Face was, James has said, written simply to try out her powers in fiction as a preliminary to attempting the novel proper. Its immediate success, however-snapped up at once by the prestigious British publishers Faber and Faber, and well reviewed on publication-caused her to try her hand again at the detective story, putting even more of the novel's concern with the workings of the human mind, and indeed of the soul, into its pages. Already present in that first attempt were many of the hallmarks of her subsequent writing. There was the fastidious prose, beautifully accurate and not without complex plots. Add to these qualities a gift for forward-looking storytelling and, above all, the creation of a detective you like and want to go on liking in Adam Dalgliesh, policeman and plausible poet" (Keating, 40).