Philippa Palfrey, adopted as a child, believes herself to be the motherless, illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic father. At eighteen she exercises her right to find out the truth. What she discovers will change her life forever. Philippa enters a new and terrifying world and soon comes to realize that she is not the only one interested in her parents' whereabouts.
Innocent Blood
and over 1.5 million other books are available for Amazon Kindle . Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Special Offer until June 30, 2013: Receive an additional £5 promotional Gift Certificate, when you trade-in at least £10 worth of books. Learn more. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
"People" P. D. James is "the greatest living mystery writer."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Stunning paperback repackages celebrating the world's pre-eminent crime writer and over forty years of detective fiction.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
71 of 74 people found the following review helpful
By C. Redfarn
Format:Paperback
PD James produces superbly written, intricately detailed and meticulously crafted detective stories. Innocent Blood, however, is a departure from her usual whodunits as neither Chief Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh nor the young private detective Cordelia Gray is featured, and there is no crime to detect. Of the two murders that permeate the story, one happened ten years ago; the murderers were brought to justice and the crime itself, once front-page news, is now nearly forgotten. The other murder is yet to happen, and we watch it being planned.
The book is set in 1978 (it was written in 1980) and takes as its starting point the Children's Act of 1975, by which adopted adults had, for the first time in Britain, the right of access to their original birth certificates, and thereby the means of tracing their natural parents. Philippa Palfrey is intellectual, privileged and gifted, and was adopted at the age of eight into an affluent but emotionally stunted family. Apart from a few flashes of memory, she has no recollection of her life before the adoption; all that she knows of her background is what her adoptive parents have told her and the cosy fantasies she has constructed for herself...it is a tribute to James' powerful writing that, even when you know it's coming, the moment that Philippa quite casually learns the truth is still shocking...
Philippa is not an appealing heroine but her arrogance hides her insecurity and desperate need to belong. Her emotional awakening and eventual self-realisation is one of the key themes of the book. But it's also a study of deceit: lies told for good or selfish reasons, how they alter the course of a life, and the way we blindly and wilfully collude in our own deception. It's an emotionally harrowing book, but utterly absorbing.
... Read more ›34 of 36 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I bought this book to read if I got really bored on holiday. In the end the holiday had to be worked round the book as it refused to be put down. A departure from P D James' more usual "detective novel", this story seems closer to the Ruth Rendell-as-Barbara Vine physcological thriller. The plot is centred on a past murder and its drastic reprocussions for two very different people caught up in its wake.
The novel is beautifully written with vivid descriptions of people and places and enough sense of impending disaster to keep you reading. I particulary liked the way in which one character's plans to commit a violent act of revenge were described in a completely deadpan way as if he was planning something as harmless as his annual holiday. This technique simply made the story all the more disturbing.
Gripping stuff!
45 of 50 people found the following review helpful
By Taylor
Format:Paperback
The material is excellent: Philippa was adopted as a child. She has now turned 18 and can claim her original birth certificate - and seek out her natural mother. Philippa has grown up in the comfortable home of a celebrated academic, she is breezing through her A levels with distinction, a place at Oxford awaits her. All is secure. Until the birth certificate arrives and she makes a shocking discovery whose consequences provide the rest of the story.
Good stuff. You really feel for such a heroine, don't you? Well no, not this heroine, that's the trouble. In order to maximize the impact of the forthcoming revelations, the author has drawn Philippa as a cold and frighteningly superior young woman. And unfortunately she has succeeded in this only too well. Philippa is simply insufferable, and however much fortune rocks her stable surroundings she never loses that cold glitter of intellectual disdain. The other major character is Maurice, her adoptive father the academic, and he isn't much better either. When his first wife died Maurice married Hilda who, to please him, has become a fabulous cook, hostess and homemaker. But poor Hilda is uneducated and deplorably lower middle-class, so both Maurice & Philippa treat her with a kind of well-bred contempt. "We both wish we could love Hilda" Maurice says. Well yes, so did I, Maurice. And perhaps that is all it would have taken to redeem this book: a little less sneering and a tad more affection. A touch of ordinary, unexceptional, uncelebrated, non-class-conscious human feeling.
By Pigwin
Format:Paperback
I have read most, if not all, of P. D. James' novels, including the Inspector Dalgliesh and Cordelia Grey detective stories and Children of Men, a dystopian novel concerning the end of the human race due to infertility.
Innocent Blood was written in 1980 and is a stand alone novel and,while not a detective story, is an excellent psychological thriller dealing with the usual themes of love, loss, quest for identity, adaptation and redemption but the overriding question of nature versus nurture must be in the minds of most people while reading this book.
Philippa Palfrey was adopted as an eight year-old by an affluent couple, Maurice and Hilda. When she is eighteen she exercises her right under The Children's Act of 1975, which allowed for adopted children, once they reached the age of eighteen, to know the identity of their biological parents. What Philippa discovers about her parents, Martin and Mary Ducton, is truly shocking i.e. her father was a child rapist and her mother a child murderer. While her father has since died her mother is still alive and due about to be released from prison.
Philippa finds a flat to rent in London and sets about refurbishing it with a view to providing a place for her mother to come to on her release and where they both can live, on a temporary basis and get to know each other.
For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the book was reading of Phillipa's efforts to do up the flat on a shoestring and then the accounts of the trips she and her mother take around the capital to reintroduce Mary to London; I also enjoyed the comraderie that seemed to develop between them as they performed the low paid work they took to subsist.... Read more ›
Innocent Blood was written in 1980 and is a stand alone novel and,while not a detective story, is an excellent psychological thriller dealing with the usual themes of love, loss, quest for identity, adaptation and redemption but the overriding question of nature versus nurture must be in the minds of most people while reading this book.
Philippa Palfrey was adopted as an eight year-old by an affluent couple, Maurice and Hilda. When she is eighteen she exercises her right under The Children's Act of 1975, which allowed for adopted children, once they reached the age of eighteen, to know the identity of their biological parents. What Philippa discovers about her parents, Martin and Mary Ducton, is truly shocking i.e. her father was a child rapist and her mother a child murderer. While her father has since died her mother is still alive and due about to be released from prison.
Philippa finds a flat to rent in London and sets about refurbishing it with a view to providing a place for her mother to come to on her release and where they both can live, on a temporary basis and get to know each other.
For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the book was reading of Phillipa's efforts to do up the flat on a shoestring and then the accounts of the trips she and her mother take around the capital to reintroduce Mary to London; I also enjoyed the comraderie that seemed to develop between them as they performed the low paid work they took to subsist.... Read more ›
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 43 reviews
3.6 out of 5 stars
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
another page turner!
P D James never fails to deliver. This was exciting, well-written and satisfying. It had a good plot, well developed characters and a ending I hadn't foreseen!
Published 2 months ago by clare meadows
5.0 out of 5 stars
couldn't put it down!
A really good read. Once again PD James is brilliant with lots of surprises. Superbly written and kept me on the edge to the very end.
Published 5 months ago by GJ
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the great modern writers of crime novels
This author never disappoints this book a slight diversion from her usual offerings but is. Very enjoyable for all that
Published 5 months ago by Jenny Wrens
5.0 out of 5 stars
Innocent Blood
I just love re-reading P.D.James she is such a good writer, in fact a superb one.well worth buying. keeps you in edge to the last
Published 7 months ago by Rev. Shirley Ludlow
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best of PD James
This is by far my favourite P.D. James, mainly because it isn't a Dalglish and doesn't feature people in velvet skirts living in country cottages in Norfolk. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Tigersuzy
2.0 out of 5 stars
The opening chapters to ORIGINAL SIN sold in extract form
This Pocket Penguin consists of the opening chapters from P. D. James's novel, ORIGINAL SIN, and is designed as a taster to read the longer book. Read more
Published on 10 Feb 2011 by I Read, Therefore I Blog
2.0 out of 5 stars
Promising but dull
I am sorry to be so blunt.
My early assumption was that the story line had an intriguing ring: London, end of the 70s. Read more
My early assumption was that the story line had an intriguing ring: London, end of the 70s. Read more
Published on 3 Feb 2008 by I LOVE BOOKS
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
