James, P(hyllis) D(orothy) (1920– )

English detective novelist. Her first novel, Cover Her Face (1962), introduced her hero Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh, and she introduced her heroine, private investigator Cordelia Gray, in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972). Many of her detective novels were filmed for television, and her dystopian novel The Children of Men (1992) was adapted into a critically acclaimed feature film in 2006.

She was a tax official, hospital administrator, and civil servant in the Home Office, involved with police matters, before turning to writing full time. Her crime novels include Death of an Expert Witness (1977), The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982), A Taste for Death (1986), Original Sin (1994), Certain Justice (1997), Death in Holy Orders (2001), The Murder Room (2003), The Lighthouse (2005), and her memoirs, Time to be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography (1999). She was created a baroness in 1991.