Very disappointing. An extremely pale copy of 10 little indians and not up to P.D. James' standards. ( )

La detective privada Cordelia Gray es invitada a la soleada isla de Courcy para proteger la vanidosamente bella actriz Clarissa Lisle de amenazas veladas contra su vida. Dentro de las paredes rojas de un castillo de cuento de hadas, encuentra que el escenario está preparado para la muerte.

It takes until page 186 for the major crime to be committed; it's a long book. I did not guess who done what (of course), but I did guess that different people may have done different things. A terrible woman who has been getting death threats hires Cordelia Gray to protect her. The interesting mystery to me is why so many people are attracted to her and stay with her after she betrays them in so many ways. ( )

Cordelia Gray Bumbles through in Second Outing
Review of the Sphere Books paperback edition (1983/1986 reprint) of the Faber & Faber hardcover original (1982)

She guarded her privacy. None of her friends and no one from the Agency had ever been in the flat. Adventures occurred elsewhere. She knew that if any man shared that narrow bed for her it would mean commitment. There was only one man she ever pictured there and he was a Commander of New Scotland Yard. She knew that he, too, lived in the City, they shared the same river. But she told herself that the brief madness was over, that at a time of stress and frightening insecurity she had only been seeking her lost father-figure. There was this to be said for a smattering of amateur psychology: it enabled one to exorcise memories which might otherwise be embarrassing.

It was not a good sign when the nameless cameo of P.D. James' regular detective character Commander Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard CID was one of the most intriguing aspects of the second outing of her private detective character Cordelia Gray. Following a 10-year hiatus after 1972's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Cordelia Gray returns in a case which promises gothic intrigue and dramatic revenge but which falls flat and leaves one forced to tag it with an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert ™.

The Pryde Detective Agency is moderately successful and Gray has even hired two office assistants to help with paperwork and research. The caseload is dominated however by the search for lost pets. A more serious case appears when Cordelia is hired by Sir George Ralston to be a bodyguard-companion to his wife, the actress Clarissa Lisle, on a weekend outing to Courcy Island. The actress has been the nervous subject of a disturbing poison pen letter campaign and her career has suffered as a consequence. She hopes that a staging of John Webster's Jacobean-era revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi (1614) with an amateur theatrical company at Courcy Island's restored Victorian era theatre will be the start of a late career revival.

See cover image at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/TheSkullBeneathTheSkin.jpg
Front cover of the original Faber & Faber hardcover edition (1982). Image sourced from Wikipedia.

Although the gothic atmosphere of Courcy Island and its rather foreboding history of deaths from the bubonic plague through to World War II prisoner of war internments is well described, the supposed investigation is rather weak. Gray does just about nothing for 80% of the book which of course results in fatal consequences for her client. She is then finally fired up to chase down what at first appears to be an insignificant press cutting reviewing an earlier Clarissa Lisle performance. The press cutting proves to be the key to the solution of the case, but instead of alerting the authorities, Gray proceeds to bumble through and almost gets herself killed. In the denouement we learn that justice will probably not even prevail. In the end, Cordelia returns to the cat and dog investigations.

There were no further Cordelia Gray private detective books to be had from P.D. James.

Trivia and No Link
The Skull Beneath the Skin has had no TV or theatrical film adaptations made to date as of this writing mid-August 2022. ( )

This was a thoroughly enjoyable detective story, with a good plot and solid characters. I spent the majority of the book believing that one [redacted] part of the murder was due to a [redacted] outcome but I was happily wrong- always a good thing in a mystery book. ( )