In deepest Dorset, the once magnificent Cheverell Manor has been renovated and transformed into a plastic surgery clinic, run by the famous cosmetic practitioner George Chandler-Powell. Two days after Rhoda Gradwyn, an investigative journalist, arrives in the hope of having her almost lifelong facial scar removed, she's savagely murdered and Chandler-Powell finds his surgery under scrutiny from Dalgliesh and his team, who are soon caught in a race against time when another body shows up...
Reception
In Bookmarks Mar/Apr 2009 issue, a magazine that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a (3.5 out of 5) based on critic reviews with a critical summary saying, "Critics agreed that if The Private Patient, a closed-room mystery, is not among the best in the series, it nonetheless outranks most crime fiction".[1]
In a 2008 book review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin called the book an "exercise in impeccable detection", and wrote "James sets her mystery on comfortably familiar terrain and makes the most of its atmospherics. But the plotting of 'The Private Patient' is not up to this author’s diabolical best."[2]Kirkus Reviews summarized it as "Middling work for the peerless James, a whodunit as deeply shadowed by mortality as all Dalgliesh’s cases ever since 'Shroud for a Nightingale'"[3] Donna Rifkind of The Washington Post wrote, "[It's] not the most formidable example of this iconic author's work, but it's still pretty darn good."[4]
