Adam Dalgliesh Books in Order: How to read P.D. James’s series?

Detective Adam Dalgliesh is the main character of the mystery series written by English crime and bestselling author P. D. James. First Detective Chief Inspector, then Commander in the Metropolitan Police Service at New Scotland Yard in London, Adam Dalgliesh is an intelligent man described as being “tall, dark and handsome” by some women.

Like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, or Lord Wimsey, Adam Dalgliesh is what we call a ‘gentleman detective.’ The child of an Anglican clergyman, he is a member of the gentry who also made a name for himself as a poet. Somewhat of a recluse, he is, at the beginning of a series, a widower, who finds himself hesitant to commit again.

How to read the Adam Dalgliesh Series in Order?

Each entry in the Adam Dalgliesh book series is offering a standalone story, but the lives of the different characters evolve from one book to the other.

1. The 12 Clues of Christmas – Short story published in The Mistletoe Murder And Other Stories. Though written later, this story featuring Adam Dalgliesh takes place before the first book.
2. Cover Her Face – Sally Jupp was a sly and sensuous young woman who used her body and her brains to make her way up the social ladder. Now she lies across her bed with dark bruises from a strangler’s fingers forever marring her lily-white throat. Someone has decided that the wages of sin should be death…and it is up to Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh to find who that someone is.
3. A Mind to Murder – On the surface, the Steen Psychiatric Clinic is one of the most reputable institutions in London. But when the administrative head is found dead with a chisel in her heart, that distinguished facade begins to crumble as the truth emerges. Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate and quickly finds himself caught in a whirlwind of psychiatry, drugs, and deceit. Now he must analyze the deep-seated anxieties and thwarted desires of patients and staff alike to determine which of their unresolved conflicts has resulted in murder and stop a cunning killer before the next blow.
4. Unnatural Causes – Maurice Seton was a famous mystery writer-but no murder he ever invented was more grisly than his own death. When his corpse is found in a drifting dinghy with both hands chopped off at the wrists, ripples of horror spread among his bizarre circle of friends. Now it’s up to brilliant Scotland Yard inspector, Adam Dalgliesh, and his extraordinary aunt to uncover the shocking truth behind the writer’s death sentence before the plot takes another murderous turn.

4. Shroud for a Nightingale – The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed. Another student dies equally mysteriously, and it is up to Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard to unmask a killer who has decided to prescribe murder as the cure for all ills.
5. The Boxdale Inheritance – Short story published in The Mistletoe Murder And Other Stories .Based on Dalgliesh’s rank at the Met, this story takes place around the time of Shroud for a Nightingale. Dalgliesh’s godfather implores him to reinvestigate a notorious murder that might ease the godfather’s mind about an inheritance, but which will reveal a truth that even the supremely upstanding Adam Dalgliesh will keep to himself.
6. The Black Tower – Just recovered from a grave illness, Commander Adam Dalgliesh receives a call for advice from the elderly chaplain at Toynton Grange, an isolated nursing home on the coast of England. But by the time Dalgliesh arrives, Father Baddeley has mysteriously died, as has one of his patients. When the bodies begin to pile up, Dalgliesh once again finds his own life at risk as he determines to get to the truth behind his friend’s death and unmask the terrible evil t the heart of Toynton Grange.
7. Death of an Expert Witness – When a brilliant forensic scientist is found murdered in his own laboratory, Scotland Yard is called to the scene. The victim, a well-respected, authoritative member of the scientific community, was unpleasant to and greatly disliked by those who worked closest to him, leaving detectives with a wealth of suspects and murderous motives. Detective Adam Dalgliesh is the one man who can sort through the lies, chasing down the truth to the book’s powerful climax.

7. A Taste for Death – When the quiet Little Vestry of St. Matthew’s Church becomes the blood-soaked scene of a double murder, Scotland Yard Commander Adam Dalgliesh faces an intriguing conundrum: How did an upper-crust Minister come to lie, slit throat to slit throat, next to a neighborhood derelict of the lowest order?
8. Devices and Desires – Commander Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard has just published a new book of poems and has taken a brief respite from publicity on the remote Larksoken headland on the Norfolk coast in a converted windmill left to him by his aunt. But he cannot so easily escape murder. A psychotic strangler of young women is at large in Norfolk, and getting nearer to Larksoken with every killing. And when Dalgliesh discovers the murdered body of the Acting Administrative Officer on the beach, he finds himself caught up in the passions and dangerous secrets of the headland community and in one of the most baffling murder cases of his career.
9. Original Sin – A murder has taken place in the offices of the Peverell Press, a venerable London publishing house. The victim is Gerard Etienne, the brilliant but ruthless new managing director, who had vowed to restore the firm’s fortunes. Etienne was clearly a man with enemies. Yet Etienne’s death, which occurred under bizarre circumstances, is for Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team only the beginning of the mystery.

10. A Certain Justice – When criminal lawyer Venetia Aldridge defends a young man for the brutal murder of his mother, she views the case as simply another opportunity to demonstrate her brilliance in the courtroom. But within weeks of the trial Aldridge is found dead at her desk, a bloodstained barrister’s wig on her head. And as Commander Adam Dalgliesh attempts to make sense of events, the murders continue.
11. Death in Holy Orders – On the East Anglian seacoast, a small theological college hangs precariously on an eroding shoreline and an equally precarious future. When the body of a student is found buried in the sand, the boy’s influential father demands that Scotland Yard investigate. Enter Adam Dalgliesh, a detective who loves poetry, a man who has known loss and discovery. And when one death leads to another, Dalgliesh finds himself steeped in a world of good and evil, of stifled passions and hidden pasts, where someone has cause not just to commit one crime but to begin an unholy order of murder…
12. The Murder Room – Adam Dalgliesh is already acquainted with the Dupayne–a museum dedicated to the interwar years, with a room celebrating the most notorious murders of that time–when he is called to investigate the killing of one of the family trustees. He soon discovers that the victim was seeking to close the museum against the wishes of the fellow trustees and the Dupayne’s devoted staff. Everyone, it seems, has something to gain from the crime. When it becomes clear that the murderer has been inspired by the real-life crimes from the murder room–and is preparing to kill again–Dalgliesh knows that to solve this case he has to get into the mind of a ruthless killer.

13. The Lighthouse – A secure and secluded retreat for the rich and powerful becomes the setting for an unsettling series of murders. Combe Island off the Cornish coast is a restful haven for the elite. But when one of its distinguished visitors is found hanging from the island’s famous lighthouse in what appears to have been a murder, the peace is shattered. Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called in to handle the sensitive case, but at a difficult time for him and his depleted team.
14. The Private Patient – Cheverell Manor is a beautiful old house in Dorset, which its owner, the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell, uses as a private clinic. When the investigative journalist, Rhoda Gradwyn, arrives to have a disfiguring facial scar removed, she has every expectation of a successful operation and a peaceful week recuperating. But the clinic houses an implacable enemy and, within hours of the operation, Rhoda is murdered. Commander Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate a case complicated by old crimes and the dark secrets of the past.

Adam Dalgliesh also appears in the two novels featuring Cordelia Gray: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and The Skull Beneath the Skin.

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