Cover Her Face (1962)
Blurb:
My review:
James’s first book is more conventional than her later works. It is shorter and tighter, and the author shows signs of humour, something she would discard in her Henry Jamesian desire to write a novel. The plot concerns the strangling of an unpleasant housemaid hours after announcing her engagement to the son of the house, who is as unpleasant a character as the rest, although character-drawing is generally pleasing, being steeped neither in Freud nor in Isabel Archerisms. Dalgliesh is, by and large, futile, for he is not seen to detect, and the solution is rather cluttered. There is no adequate positive clue to the murderer, who is discovered by elimination of the other possibilities.