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A review by jenneb_readingjournal
A Mind to Murder by P.D. James
3.0
Read this as part of the M.E. Mystery Challenge 2022.
Adam Dalgliesh #2 (one of my favorite detectives and a personal goal of mine is to read the entire series), and while this was a decent book you can tell the writing style of P.D. was evolving as compared to her later books, such as Death in Holy Orders. The writing isn't as tight and the characters not as sketched out. I did guess the perpetrator rather quickly but it was interesting to see the timeline needed for the murder to take place.
The book was originally published in 1963 and so there's mention of LSD being used to treat psychiatric patients. I am a nurse and I had to look up the difference between a Sister and a Nurse (the term Sister for a nurse stems from the time nuns were nurses). From the research I could find (and if anyone in the UK reads this, please correct me if I'm wrong), a Nurse in the UK would be similar to a Staff Nurse in the US; a Sister or Ward Sister in the UK is similar to a Charge Nurse in the US; a Nurse Matron in the UK is similar to a Nursing Director in the US. The one thing I really enjoyed about this book was learning about all this (the LSD therapy in psychiatry and UK nursing terms).
One murder: stabbing.
Adam Dalgliesh #2 (one of my favorite detectives and a personal goal of mine is to read the entire series), and while this was a decent book you can tell the writing style of P.D. was evolving as compared to her later books, such as Death in Holy Orders. The writing isn't as tight and the characters not as sketched out. I did guess the perpetrator rather quickly but it was interesting to see the timeline needed for the murder to take place.
The book was originally published in 1963 and so there's mention of LSD being used to treat psychiatric patients. I am a nurse and I had to look up the difference between a Sister and a Nurse (the term Sister for a nurse stems from the time nuns were nurses). From the research I could find (and if anyone in the UK reads this, please correct me if I'm wrong), a Nurse in the UK would be similar to a Staff Nurse in the US; a Sister or Ward Sister in the UK is similar to a Charge Nurse in the US; a Nurse Matron in the UK is similar to a Nursing Director in the US. The one thing I really enjoyed about this book was learning about all this (the LSD therapy in psychiatry and UK nursing terms).
One murder: stabbing.