He liked to fix the sight of the murdered body firmly in his mind. He was never conscious of pity at moments like this and not even of anger, although that might come later and would have to be resisted. The sort of man who is described by James as standing by the body of the murder victim: He might seem a hard man, even bitter.īut, if you isolate his face, the emotion behind it seems to be resoluteness allied with a close concentration and a complex, active mind. In his thick-fingered hand is a rolled-up piece of paper.

It shows a burger of the time, wearing a large flat hat - cocked at what, over another face, might be a playful angle - and a black coat with a rich fur collar and lapel. The other is a painting that’s at the Prado in Madrid. Not my idea of Dalgleish, even if I had only read this book. There are at least two Durer works titled “Portrait of an Unknown Man.” One is a chalk portrait in a Berlin museum that shows a young man with a somewhat dreamy look. Why does one always expect police officers to wear bowlers and raincoats.”

In Munich was it? Portrait of an Unknown Man. There is, of course, Dalgleish who impresses the mother of the estate’s family in this way:Įleanor Maxie thought, “Where have I seen that head before. James novel with all its gravitas and psychological nuances held under the thin and busy surface of this book’s plot, trying mightily to escape. Throughout, there are hints of the writer that James would become and of the novels that the more seasoned author would create.Īnd more than hints, really. It’s a bit hokey in the way that most of Christie’s novels were hokey.Įven so, Cover Her Face is a pleasure to read. I’ve seen reports that, later in her writing life, James said that she didn’t think much of this first effort, and there’s good reason. And the solution is incredibly complex and far-fetched. The murder victim is found behind a locked door. There is a hothouse quality to the novel, set as it is in the rural estate of landed gentry (albeit a little threadbare). This is worth noting because, in many ways, Cover Her Face is very much of the Christie genre. It was followed over the next 14 years by 13 more. Her 60 th The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side came in 1962.

In the previous 41 years, she had published 59 mysteries. James published Cover Her Face, her first murder mystery featuring Detective Chief-Inspector Adam Dalgleish of Scotland Yard.Īt the time, Agatha Christie was still the dominant voice in the field, selling millions of mysteries each year and cranking out new novels at an annual pace.

Adam dalgliesh cover her face