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Most reviewed: The Private Patient and The Birthday Present

04.09.08 Katie Allen

The two most reviewed books this week were by doyennes of crime fiction, with both attracting cautious praise from the critics.

P D James' The Private Patient is her 14th Dalgleish novel. Marcel Berlins, writing in the Times, says: "The quality is averagely excellent James, although not among her best three or four." He adds that she has "lost none of her acuity, subtlety and inventiveness".

The Sunday Times' Penny Perrick recognises James' creation of "an atmosphere of twitchy foreboding" and says she "brings a stinging clarity to the complicated goings-on in the Dorset countryside".

M John Harrison in the Guardian is less impressed: "While we have the structure of a mystery, we don't have the surface." The Daily Express' Jennifer Selway disagrees: "Her delineation of character is surpassed only by her phenomenal ability to describe places, interiors, landscapes and cities."

Jake Kerridge in the Daily Telegraph has yet another interpretation: "Full of the usual insight, although the characteris-ation and plotting are not up to her best standard." Kerridge's review of The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine, pen name of Ruth Rendell, is more positive, describing the author as "at her most mischievous and entertaining", while Henry Sutton in the Daily Mirror comments on her "consummate skill". Caroline Moore in the Sunday Telegraph concedes that The Birthday Present is a "well constructed but, at first, deliberately uninvolving novel". The Observer's Peter Guttridge is equally measured: "The period she is describing seems oddly like another age. Even so, a suspenseful and chilling tale."

Returning to the Express' Jennifer Selway: "Where James leads us towards majestic resolution, this prime Vine is more edgy and possibly more entertaining."

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