Adam Dalgliesh is a fictional character who has been the protagonist of fourteen mystery novels by P. D. James; the first being James's 1962 novel Cover Her Face. He also appears in the two novels featuring James' other detective, Cordelia Gray. In the first novel, Dalgliesh is a Detective Chief Inspector. He eventually reaches the rank of Commander in the Metropolitan Police Service at New Scotland Yard in London. He is an intensely cerebral and private person. He writes poetry, a fact about which his colleagues are fond of reminding him. Several volumes of his poetry have been published. Dalgliesh lives in a flat above the Thames at Queenhithe in the City of London. In his lengthy career, he has been quite astute and successful and now heads a squad of CID officers working on only the most sensitive cases. Dalgliesh is a late example of the gentleman detective, a staple of British detective fiction.Adam Dalgliesh is a fictional character who has been the protagonist of fourteen mystery novels by P. D. James; the first being James's 1962 novel Cover Her Face. He also appears in the two novels featuring James' other detective, Cordelia Gray. In the first novel, Dalgliesh is a Detective Chief Inspector. He eventually reaches the rank of Commander in the Metropolitan Police Service at New Scotland Yard in London. He is an intensely cerebral and private person. He writes poetry, a fact about which his colleagues are fond of reminding him. Several volumes of his poetry have been published. Dalgliesh lives in a flat above the Thames at Queenhithe in the City of London. In his lengthy career, he has been quite astute and successful and now heads a squad of CID officers working on only the most sensitive cases. Dalgliesh is a late example of the gentleman detective, a staple of British detective fiction.
"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!"
Shakespeare, King Lear (Edmund) Act I, scene ii
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