But what about Dettinger, the patient Pearce nursed and who has since died – but not before claiming to have uncovered a nasty secret at the hospital? Dorothy l. When Pearce’s unsavoury background comes to light, together with the fact that Fallon was pregnant, many conclude that one killed the other and then committed suicide. “What have you done with that handsome sergeant of your’s? I thought policemen went around in pairs like nuns” When another student, Jo Fallon, dies the next day after sipping a poisoned glass of whisky in her bath, Dalgliesh is called in to take over the investigation. There are thus plenty of suspects when she dies in a horrible fashion when poison is added to the intra-gastric tube that was inserted through her nostril and into her stomach during a class demonstration. In addition there are some distinctly unpleasant recruits among the students, most notably Heather Pearce, whose holier-than-thou stance masks and envious blackmailer desperate to use any means to obtain power over the other students. Beyond the petty jealousies and in-fighting among her staff – most notably the rigid Sister Brumfett, the bitter Sister Gearing and the lovelorn Sister Rolfe – there is the titanic arrogance of the surgeon, Stephen Courtney-Briggs. The matron, Mary Tailor, rules over it with great intelligence, but she has a lot to put up with. Nightingale House Training School is a gloomy Victorian pile set in a secluded part of John Carpendar Hospital on the Sussex/Hampshire border. I submit this review for Katie’s 2014 Book to Movie Challenge at Doing Dewey Bev’s 2014 Silver Age Vintage Mystery Challenge and Patti Abbott’s Friday’s Forgotten Books meme, today coralled by Todd Mason over at his blog, Sweet Freedom. The indignity is that we die at all, not what happens to our bodies” “For God’s sake don’t start being sentimental about death. It is set in a nursing school and, at considerable length and in great detail, anatomises the lives of the female students and teachers and the buried secret that will result in four deaths. Easier to admire than to like, this was the fourth in PD James’ series featuring her detective, Adam Dalgliesh.

The lighthouse pd james summary