The Skull beneath the Skin [Paperback]

" A masterly version of the clue-and-alibi game. . . . Five star!"
-- "The Guardian
"" P.D. James pulls out all the stops ...combining the enclosed setting of the country-house murder with elements of the horror story; an overlay of lust; a collection of relics of Victorian murderers ...midnight apparitions; hairbreadth escapes."
-- "New York Magazine" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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.

Hired to protect a beautiful but neurotic actress, Cordelia Gray soon becomes embroiled in a case as dangerous to her own life as it is mysterious.

Clarissa Lisle hopes to make a spectacular comeback in a production of The Duchess of Malfi, to be played in Ambrose Gorringe's sinister castle at Courcy Island. Cordelia is there to ensure her safety following the appearance of a number of poison-pen letters. But it soon becomes clear that all are in danger. Trapped within the walls of the Gothic Castle, the treacherous past of the island re-emerges, and everyone seems to have a motive for sending Clarissa 'down, down the hell'.

Marking the return of Cordelia Gray, The Skull Beneath the Skin is a complex mystery that more than lives up to its predecessor, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman.

P. D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. All that experience has been used in her novels. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts and has served as a Governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, where she was Chairman of the Literary Advisory Panel, on the Board of the British Council, and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She is an Honorary Bencher of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. She has won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature (US). She has received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983, and was created a life peer in 1991. In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors. She lives in London and Oxford and has two daughters, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.