I enjoy P. D. James and her detective, Adam Dalgleish, but this one wasn’t my favorite. Maybe a bit too much personal story—Dalgleish married? No. And the plot seemed a bit all over the place, without fully taking advantage of its potentially spooky setting in a manor house-clinic in the Dorset countryside, complete with standing stones. The story begins with investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn’s determination to finally have plastic surgery on a terrible scar on her face in her 40s—we learn how it happened, learn a bit about her career, and her close associates. But once the surgery is complete, very early on, the story loses its way a bit. We’re presented with a cascade of characters, a little superficially drawn, and the crime is resolved quickly in the last 30 pages or so. I won’t give up on P. D. James, but wish I’d given this one a miss.