P. D. James

A legendary name in the realm of crime fiction, author P.D. James did not begin her prolific career as a published writer until the age of 42. Born Phyllis Dorothy James, James only attended Cambridge High School for Girls in Cambridge, England until the age of sixteen, when her father chose to unenroll her, as family funds were short and he did not believe in higher education for girls. James returned to her native Oxford where she joined the workforce to help care for her family, which was under considerable stress since James' mother had recently been admitted to a mental hospital. James worked at a tax office and as an assistant stage manager for a local theater company until she met and married an army doctor named Ernest Connor White in 1941. The young couple had two daughters together, Claire and Jane. But tragedy struck when White came home after serving in World War II having become utterly disabled by the onset of schizophrenia. He would require frequent care in psychiatric institutions, leaving it up to James to provide for her children. She studied hospital administration and soon began working for Great Britain's National Health Service. Over the next several years, James would go on to work in other areas of government organization, including the Home Office's Police Department and Criminal Policy Department, and these settings would come to play a prominent role in her novels, which were often set in bureaucratic environments and cloistered communities. James would continue her career in civil service even after her first novel, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962. The book starred what would become one of James' most prominent recurring characters, Adam Dalgliesh, a poet detective who would eventually appear in fourteen of her books. But this moment of triumph was punctuated with sadness when just two years later, James' husband died at age 44 from what James later described as a toxic amount of drugs and alcohol. James continued to publish books with steady success and an increasingly loyal following, as readers and critics praised her novels for their well developed sense of atmosphere and fully realized characters. Mainly writing in the mystery genre, James' showed a willingness to explore the graphic details of violence and murder in her stories, so long as it served the story. This was just one of many aspects that set her apart from her forebears like Agatha Christie, to whom she nonetheless earned comparisons for her similarly clever plot twists. She began to rack up awards for her work, starting with the 1972 Crime Writers' Association Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction for her novel Shroud of a Nightmare, and a runner-up prize for the Best Novel Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her 1973 book An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. Incredibly, James would publish seven novels while simultaneously continuing her career in government, finally retiring from civil service to write "full time" in 1979. She wrote several more books over the subsequent decades, many of which still followed the investigations of Adam Dalgliesh. In addition to traditional detective stories however, the writer would also explore science fiction themes with her 1992 novel The Children of Men. The landmark book was published just a year after she was created a life peer by Queen Elizabeth with the title of Baroness in the British House of Lords. The year also brought another special accolade for James, as the University of Buckingham became the first of seven universities to grant her an honorary doctorate. James continued to write new and successful stories until the end of her life. Eleven of her works were adapted into mini-series for British television, and Children of Men found tremendous success as a major motion picture in 2006. James' final novel, 2011's Death Comes to Pemberley, integrated the trappings of a murder mystery into the setting of a Jane Austen novel, impressing readers yet again with her sense of ingenuity. James passed away in her home in Oxford, England on November 27, 2014. She was 94.