A Certain Justice [Audio Cassette]

1- It is a new stage in the English genre. Sherlock Holmes was an outsider competing with the police. Hercule Poirot was Belgian, so twice an outsider. Here Dalgliesh is a member of Scotland Yard. This book is, in a way, a vindication of Scotland Yard.

2- It contains a deep reflection on social determinism. Both one of the criminals and one of the coppers (a man and a woman) were born and raised in a socially derelict apartment complex and neighborhood for the poor. They both had the same choice, and they chose two different ways.

3- It advocates a certain vision of managing people. Dalgliesh is both strict on basic rules with his subordinates, but also extremely humane, even with unprovable criminals. « It is better for a useful man to continue to be useful than to spend years in gaol ».

4- It displays a deep understanding of human justice and perticularly that fundamentally British principle that it is better to let a criminal go free than to imprison an innocent. This principle is surprisingly original, and also irritating for the judicial system, in foreign countries, in Europe or the USA. Any doubt about the guilt or the value, the force of a piece of evidence has to benefit the accused, no matter what. We suddenly think of Mumia Abu Jamal's case which exposes the radically opposite functioning : contradictory testimonies should benefit the accused. In this case the textimony that does not support the guilt of the accused is overlooked, if not purely negated.

5- Finally, this book is Dickenbsian because it gives us a phenomenal description of the psychology and the social background of all characters, policemen, policewomen, suspects, criminals, etc... We have here a fully developed social tableau of modern time Great Britain.

A masterpipece in the genre. When the British set themselves to doing something good, they are excellent. And the detective story genre is one field of absolute perfection for them. Three details though. The keyring of the first victim is overlooked during most of the investigation. A drawback. A jacket belt that is not in the proper place at the end. A shortcoming. What about the never answered question : « Why did he ask me to inquire about the spectacles she was wearing ? » A flaw. But such details do not reduce the value of the book as a fantastic description of modern British society.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

For some reason, Ms. James felt the need to describe every character and place to the most minute detail. This description lent to the length of the book which was extremely long. More then once I thought of not finishing this book. If this hadn't been the audio version I probably wouldn't have finished. I felt the book would have been just as good if not better if some of this description had been left out. About the first 20 chapters (6 tapes) was nothing but a description of the suspects who worked in Chambers. Really, not necessary.

I havn't read any other books by Ms. James and am currently undecided about trying another.

The only other author I can think of to compare Ms. James with would be Agatha Christie. Both have that passion for describing things in their books to the most minute detail.