The Skull Beneath the Skin
First edition
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| Author | P. D. James |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Cordelia Gray #2 |
| Genre | Mystery novel, Crime fiction |
| Publisher | Faber and Faber |
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Publication date
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1982 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | 384 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 59161851 |
| Preceded by | An Unsuitable Job for a Woman |
The Skull Beneath The Skin is a 1982 detective novel by P. D. James, featuring her female private detective Cordelia Gray. The novel is set in a reconstructed Victorian castle on the fictional Courcy Island on the Dorset coast and centers around actress Clarissa Lisle who is to play John Webster's drama The Duchess of Malfi in the castle's restored theatre. It takes its title from T. S. Eliot's poem Whispers of Immortality, where Webster is famously said to be "much possessed by death" and to see "the skull beneath the skin".
Cordelia Gray is engaged by Sir George Ralston, a baronet and World War II hero, to accompany his wife, the acclaimed actress Clarissa Lisle, for a weekend at Courcy Castle on the island of the same name on the Dorset coast. Clarissa has been receiving thinly veiled death threats in form of quotations from plays where she played the main role.
Shortly before the performance of The Duchess of Malfi, Clarissa is brutally murdered, leaving Cordelia and the Dorset CID to deal with solving the crime.
Cordelia Gray
Cordelia Gray is the heroine/detective of the story. The book is written mainly from her point of view. Cordelia is the owner of the none too successful Pryde's Detective Agency (named for her old boss/mentor, Bernie Pryde, who has committed suicide and left the business to her). With business in a lull, she and her two staff members, Bevis and Miss Maudsley, have been reduced to finding missing pets, at which they are quite successful.
Cordelia is hired by Clarissa Lisle's husband, Sir George Ralston, to discover who has been sending her threatening letters. However, when Clarissa is suddenly murdered, she feels duty bound to solve the mystery of why and by whom Clarissa was killed.
Sir George Ralston
The last of Clarissa Lisle's many husbands. A former soldier, he has a 'dark' history on Courcy Island. He is "A little over sixty", conservative, well groomed, and formal. He employs Cordelia as a sop to his wife's insecurities, never suspecting that she has any serious enemies.
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Wikipedia