Death of an Expert Witness

What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.

What this book is about

Dr. Edwin Lorrimer is the chief biologist at a forensic science laboratory in East Anglia — a man whose professional precision is matched by a capacity for personal contempt that has made him enemies throughout the lab. When he is found dead, Commander Adam Dalgliesh investigates the closed world of the laboratory, where everyone knew Lorrimer and most of them had reasons to dislike him. P.D. James's sixth Dalgliesh novel is her most focused on the sociology of a professional institution — the specific hierarchies and resentments of a workplace — and uses the forensic science setting to examine what happens when the people who solve crimes are themselves the suspects.