Venetia Aldridge QC is a distinguished barrister. When she

agrees to defend Garry Ashe, accused of the brutal murder of

his aunt, it is one more opportunity to triumph in her career as a criminal lawyer. But Regina v. Ashe initiates events both frightening and unpredictable.

Just four weeks later, Miss Aldridge is found dead in her Middle Temple Chambers. Commander Adam Dalgliesh, called in to investigate, finds motives for murder among the clients Venetia has defended, her professional colleagues, her family - even her lover. As Dalgliesh and his team narrow the field of suspects, a second brutal murder draws them into greater complexities of intrigue and evil.

P D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service as an administrator, and the experience she gained from her job helped her with the background for Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower and A Mind to Murder. In 1968 she entered the Home Office as Principal, working first in the police department concerned with the forensic science service, and later in the Criminal Policy department. She retired in 1979. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was a Governor of the BBC from. 1988 to 1993 and was a member of the Board of the British Council from 1988 to 1993. She served on the Arts Council and was Chairman of its Literary Advisory Panel from 1988 to 1992. She bas served as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She has won awards for crime writing from Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, and bas received honorary degrees from six universities. In 1983 she received the OBE and she was created a life peer in 1991. In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors. She bas been a widow for over twenty-five years and has two children and five grandchildren.

Her novels include An Unsuitable job for a Woman, Innocent Blood and The Skull Beneath the Skin (also available as Trilogy of Death); Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower and Death of an Expert Witness (also available as A Dalgliesh Trilogy); A Taste for Death, A Mind to Murder and Devices and Desires (also available as A Second Dalgliesh Trilogy); Cover Her Face; Unnatural Causes; The Children of Men; 0riginal Sin; and A Certain justice. She is coauthor, with T. A. Critchley, of The Maul and the Pear Tree. All of her books are published in Penguin.