Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales by P.D. James
Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast,—
Macbeth Act 2, Scene 2
William Shakespeare
The Queen of Crime
This quote, from which the title of this book of previously published short stories is taken, refers to the terrible effects Duncan’s murder has on everyone: the victim (of course!), the victim’s loved ones, and those who commit or witness the crime. As P.D. James has stated: “Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim. Murder destroys privacy, both of the living and the dead. It forces us to confront what we are and what we are capable of being.” In Macbeth’s case, instead of profiting from killing Duncan, he descends into madness. Like this Shakespearean tragedy, it is the complications that arise from murder, not the actual solving of the murder, that P.D. James explores so well in both her novels and certainly in these stories.
It is the moral ambiguities and psychological effects of murder that enrich P.D. James’ six British “murderous tales.” Each is a stand-alone story exploring the themes of obsession, revenge, neglect, ambition, morality, greed, deceit, identity, the existence of evil, and/or the unyielding force of the past. Not one plot is tied up with a neat little bow. In fact, each story increases, rather than mitigates, ethical questions and emotional uncertainty.
There is something for everyone in this collection. “The Murder of Santa Claus,” is in the traditional Agatha Christie mode. A group of guests gathered at a country manor quickly become suspects when the host is murdered shortly after performing as Father Christmas. In “The Victim,” P.D. James gets inside the mind of a murderer who is driven by jealousy and revenge. Little does he know that his ex-wife harbors her own cunning secrets. The ending poses a terrific group discussion question: Who is the real victim, the murdered or the murderer?
The author’s gift for character development and the description of setting are on display in my favorite story from this collection, “The Girl Who Loved Graveyards.” Focusing on a lonely orphan with a black hole in her past, the author describes the moment when she first looks out her aunt and uncle’s window and becomes mesmerized by the cemetery neighboring their house.
And there, stretched beneath her, lay the cemetery, luminous and mysterious in the early morning light, bounded by iron railings and separated from the rear of Alma Terrace only by a narrow path. It was to be another warm day, and over the serried rows of headstones lay a thin haze pierced by the occasional obelisk and by the wing tips of marble angels whose disembodied heads seemed to be floating on particles of shimmering light. And as she watched, motionless in an absorbed enchantment, the mist began to rise and the whole cemetery was revealed to her, a miracle of stone and marble, bright grass and summer-laden trees, flower-bedecked graves and intersecting paths stretching as far as the eye could see. In the distance she could just make out the spire of a Victorian chapel, gleaming like the spire of some magical castle in a long-forgotten fairy tale. In those moments of growing wonder she found herself shivering with delight, an emotion so rare that it stole through her thin body like a pain. And it was then, on the first morning of her new life, with the past a void and the future unknown and frightening, that she made the cemetery her own. Throughout her childhood and youth it was to remain a place of delight and mystery, her refuge and her solace. [pp. 114-115]
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