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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 6, No. 40 |
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'THE MURDER ROOM' will be shown in two parts on PBS' "Mystery!" by most PBS stations. SUNDAYS, Oct. 9 & 16, at 9 p.m. Check your local TV Guide for exact airdates and times |
 MARTIN SHAW as ADAM DALGLIESH |
TV's Adam Dalgliesh canon:
Is that all there is for us?
of TheColumnists.com
This Sunday night, PBS' "Mystery!" will conclude its 2005 season with the premiere of P.D. James' "The Murder Room," a two-part mystery that may also be the conclusion of the complete Adam Dalgliesh canon--12 of the best modern mystery novels any author has ever written.
P. D. James is now in her mid-80s. As far as I know, she intends to keep writing about Adam Dalgliesh, but if the series has to end, this one has a coda-like feel about it and it could serve as the final case for the brilliant sleuth.
For all the grousing some of us have done about this long-running television mystery series--and I did a good bit of it myself when they replaced Roy Marsden as the star of the series--I'll have to say it has set an incredibly impressive standard for quality since it all began with the telecast of "Death of An Expert Witness" in England in April of 1983.
Consider this: James has written a dozen novels about her moody, literate and incisive police detective, starting with "Cover Her Face" in 1962. Each and every one of them has now been filmed and telecast in the U.S. via the PBS "Mystery!" series. With a few exceptions, they have been absolutely superb.
Baroness James wasn't that crazy about some of them, especially the ones where they tried to involve Adam Dalgliesh in romantic goings-on that weren't in the original books. She also was unhappy that they filmed the novels out of sequence since she has made sure Adam shows steady growth as a character from decade to decade.
I think James and I probably agree on the one we liked the least: "A Mind to Murder," which was the second novel she wrote about Dalgliesh, but wasn't filmed until way late in the series. By that time, Dalgliesh had risen to the rank of Commander at New Scotland Yard in her novels, but the movie had him doing things way beneath his dignity and position because the storyline took place much earlier in his career.
I loved this detective character from the first time I met him, which was while reading his very first adventure as the prelude to reading the whole canon in chronological order. Though James set much of "Cover Her Face" in a rural estate, where most of the suspects were gathered under one roof, she was most clearly not writing an old-fashioned Agatha Christie-style "cozy" murder mystery.
Dalgliesh was a very modern sort of man. He had none of the cynicism of the old-fashioned American "hard-boiled" detectives like Hammett's Sam Spade or Chandler's Philip Marlowe. In fact, you might say he was in touch with his feminine side, as Robert B. Parker's Spenser also would be when he came along more than a decade after Dalgliesh.
In his first published story, Dalgliesh was recovering from the traumatic loss of his young wife and their first-born child. He was a wounded man, hurting from what must have seemed like a life-ending tragedy. He had just begun to really make his mark, not only as a police detective, but also as a respected English poet.
From that first story, readers could see that Dalgliesh had NOT been soured by his constant exposure to criminals and madmen. Despite his own personal loss, which had left his life in terrible disarray, he always was able to feel the pain of others. This has made him one of the most gentle and understanding of all heroes in detective fiction.
In short, Dalgliesh has the soul of a poet. You can't help noticing that as you follow him through so many complex cases. He knows people very well and perhaps that's why he so often is one step ahead of even the most clever of criminals.
P. D. James has given us a sleuth who is at times almost more like a priest than a detective. He has kept his own life simple and uncomplicated, even though James has lately begun to tell us more and more about his formative years, especially in her next to latest novel in the series, "Death in Holy Orders."
That brings us to "The Murder Room," which follows the pattern James has set for her Dalgliesh mysteries for quite a long while. It takes place mainly in a single setting--this time a small private museum near the edge of London's Hampstead Heath--and yet we're always aware that a teeming, modern city lies all around it, complete with all the issues of contemporary English life.
This may be what I like best about James' novels. She clings to certain conventions of the classic mystery and yet her books are most definitely linked to the issues of today and the pressures so many of us feel. This time there is pressure on her small family of key characters to abandon the little museum because it seems to many a relic of another age--and not exactly one worth preserving.
The three surviving adult children of the museum's founder are at bitter odds over the future of the place, which is devoted to a mere 20 years of English history--from 1919 to 1939. Probably its most renowned exhibits are those in the so-called "murder room," which chronicles sensational murders committed in England during those 20 years.
In the book, Dalgliesh first visits the museum a week before anything of interest to the police happens there. The movie dispenses with that visit, preferring instead to introduce us first to the family of suspects, then to plunge us into the murder case along with Commander Dalgliesh.
The murder is a bizarre one: A key figure in museum affairs is accosted as he prepares to enter the vintage sports car he keeps in a garage on the grounds. He's attacked, then he's doused with petrol and set afire while still alive. It's a grisly murder--and it mirrors one of the classic murders exhibited in "The Murder Room" at the museum.
This murder leads Dalgliesh and his team of "major crime" detectives into a dense and complex investigation that keeps him busier than any recent case. That poses a special conflict for him because, after years of bachelorhood, Dalgliesh is now trying to decide if the time has come to marry again. He's now quite involved with Emma Lavenham (Janie Dee), the mature and lovely woman he met in his prior adventure, "Death in Holy Orders," but she is being egged on by her female friends to lay down the law to Dalgliesh--make more time for her in his life...or lose her.
For the first time in many, many novels, Dalgliesh is truly skewed on the point of a personal dilemma: Does he love Emma enough to risk his position as a commander of detectives at New Scotland Yard? You will know that answer once you reach the emotional final sequence of "The Murder Room"--and for many long-patient fans of Dalgliesh, it will be even more suspenseful than the resolution of the murder case.
Roy Marsden, who played Dalgliesh in the first 10 of the 12 film versions, is sorely missed in this one. There is nothing technically wrong with Martin Shaw's rendition of Dalgliesh, so I hate to quibble over this. In fact, Baroness James was never able to picture Marsden as her haunted detective, perhaps because Marsden himself is so self-assured about the motivations of the characters he plays and quite politically liberal. I know James was irritated whenever Marsden spoke to the press as if he knew Dalgliesh better than anyone else--and I suspect it galled the conservative James no end to know a liberal was playing her favorite sleuth.
In my opinion, Shaw's Dalgliesh is quietly effective, but there's nothing coming out of Shaw that seems to tell us this detective is someone who should command wide respect. Nor do the essential sparks between Adam and Emma materialize. I don't think Martin Shaw is a sparky sort of actor. Maybe Marsden's Dalgliesh was a spot too arrogant and disdainful, but I have a suspicion Emma would have looked forward to her future with him with much more enthusiam than she shows for the professorial Shaw in the movie.
But that's just quibble material. The important
thing to note is that "The Murder Room" is an involving,
cleverly-conceived mystery movie and it has the distinctive look
and feel of its many successful predecessors. It's definitely
a show you shouldn't miss.
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©2005 by Ron Miller.
The photo is courtesy of WGBH Boston. This column first posted
Oct. 6, 2005
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine
and teaches classes in mystery for the Academy of Lifelong Learning
at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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