Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Bertie Carvel, Allegra Marland, Sam Swainsbury, Parth Thakerar, Holly Castle, Ellora Torchia, Josie Walker, Soni Razdan, Jack Myers, Richard Doubleday, Oliver Woollford, Sara Powell, Allison Harding, Anne Bird, Andrew Tiernan, Alistair Brammer.

The country house murder, a staple of the detective writer’s handbook, no intriguing mind can resist, it seems setting at least one novel within the confines of the manor house and amongst the beating hearts of the rich and self-made and those that are required to serve them, are de rigueur for the armchair fans to tease out the insight to what makes the two classes mix with each other, despise one another, and ultimately it could be argued, protect one another when the time comes to draw forces against the police.

Nowhere it could be argued does the kind of crime where passion, politics, and enforced subservience of power, installed, or inverted, take hold as well as in the British countryside; there is an aspect of the way the country has the stranglehold on such events and too which, depending on the type of creature the detective is, can hold the wealth of information in their hand and crush it to smithereens, or see it and understand the relationship and study it with wonder.

Commander Dalgliesh is of the latter kind of detective and man to whom crime, especially murder, is not as clear cut as it seems, a human being who can straddle both worlds, one able to hold the suspect’s words and smash them, but also touching upon his poetic soul, nurse them till the truth finally reveals itself without the need for histrionics or pantomime.

In Cover Her Face, the latest adaptation of P.D. James’ first novel, the resolute Bertie Carvel once more stands in the form of the well-mannered, softly spoken, but sharp of will and mind Dalgliesh and gives a performance that speaks volumes of how we perceive class in a time when it shouldn’t matter and yet routinely, constantly admire it in the shadows of deference and possible ruination.

One of the beauties of the series is its consistency, and most of all to time. By refusing to bring it into the modern day, keeping it within its late 1960s and early 1970s setting that has become so abundantly enjoyed, it allows the narrative to be unhindered by the techniques we employ today, and which we must circumnavigate to employ deception in modern armchair thrillers.
The battle of wits that comes across is one of chess proportions, the sleight of hand in removing a suspect from the list as the dead woman is found, the addition of the despicable actions of the far-right as a device, all give the sorry tale of pride a deserved, and focused insight.

A stimulating case and framed with pathos and regret, a revealed shame about the misconception of honour; Cover Her Face is remarkably clear of the use of the country house murder when it is not for monetary gain.

Ian D. Hall