I did not experience the muffled sound quality mentioned by a previous reviewer, and overall I liked Marsden's narration -- The style is a "read" nove..Show More »l rather than one narrated with many voices and much inflection, however. I think that style suits James' novels very well. Marsden did read quickly, though, and for one long segment near the climax, much too quickly for listening enjoyment.


The novel itself is a cleverly plotted traditional English cozy, but James had not yet developed her power of evoking atmosphere in this first novel. I downloded "Cover Her Face" after enjoying a couple of James' more recent Dalgleish mysteries so much that I wanted to start at the beginning of the series to learn about the development of the Dalgleish character. In this I was somewhat disappointed because Dalgleish appears already as a master detective and there are few glances inside his head. It was still a worthy listen and I'll happily move on to the next in the series.

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This early PD James story is quite good though not as satisfying as her more recent novels. However, the sound quality is poor and makes listening to..Show More » the story an ordeal. I suspect that it's just copied from an old cassette with no attempt made to clean up the audio. I would recommend that all recordings of this quality be removed from Audible's library until the sound can be enhanced by modern techniques.

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I found this very similar to (but not quite as good as) Death in Holy Orders. There is more mystery, but less armosphere and fewer setting details. I ..Show More »enjoyed the glimpse of the younger Adam Dailglish and will listen to more of James' earlier mysteries.

The narrator does not use many or much varied voices, but reads clearly. That may not be to everyone's taste. The pace of reading seemed too fast to me for James' style, but I've noticed that in other older books converted to enhanced format, so it may not be the narrator himself.

There were some audio quality problems (unstable volume, some static in the last hour) with my download, which I suspect may be also linked to the converson to enhanced format, so perhaps dowload this in format 4.


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P.D. James' boods are always a good read. If you enjoyed any of the PBS mysteries with Detective James Dalgliesh, you will want to read this.

The technical quality of this production is very poor.

I felt there was too much reverb in the recording levels making it difficult to understand without paying a lot of careful attention.

Ok, this was a classic PD James book; beautifully written, lots of very nice psychological details; lots and lots of descriptions; and a good mystery ..Show More »to boot. Would have rated it 5 stars but I found myself wanting the author to get on with the story and therefore lighten up on the descriptions and the psychological details. So, what makes this book great, also made it lag. Perhaps I have become impatient lately because of the more americanized detective stories I have been reading as of late. But, if you want to spend a lot of time on one very well written and detailed murder mystery, this is it. Oh, and I liked PD James' little self portrait which she placed in the book towards the end. . . or I wanted to think it was her, anyway.

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PD James combines the traditional crime writer's intrigue, plot twists, secrets uncovered and the distinctive character of the "good guy" in this case..Show More » Adam Dalgleish with the literary quality of serious novelists seeking to explore aspects of the "human condition". Her characters and James as the hidden narrator reflect on aspects of human experience especially as highlighted by crime, deception and death. The stories are coloured by vignettes of peripheral characters whose lives and situations are captured in a few short sentences which add to the panorama of what would otherwise be the somewhat suffocating intensity of her exploration of likely suspects and the mysteries of their connections to the victim(s). Thankfully the reader is not subjected to streams of foul language under the pretext of "realism". Instead the characters in this and her other novels speak and think in intelligent, discriminative and perceptive terms about the action and about each other. This particular story is set in a theological college threatened with closure in which a series of deaths occur at least one of which is murder. As the characters are introduced and then "investigated" interesting individuals emerge to stimulate the reader into conjectures along with the poet-inspector about what has happened and what will happen.
Michael Jayston is excellent in his characterisation of the players in this drama. His mastery of accents, intonation and general empathy for the way individuals express their lines brings the characters to life in the imagination of the listener.
If you like to think as well as just find out who did it, then James' work is worth exploring and this audiobook is an excellent place to begin.


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Every once in a while I come across a book that is so engrossing that I don't want it to end. This was such a book for me. Not since Pillars of the ..Show More »Earth have I been so transformed while listening/reading. PD James is my favorite, and in my opinion, one of the best mystery writers of all time. Her character development is rich and intelligent. Unlike Girl With the Dargon Tatoo (which I did enjoy, by the way) James' style is subtle - she doesn't hit you over the head with shocking violence or unbelievable characters.

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