PD James dead at 94

PD James, Baroness James of Holland Park, died peacefully on Thursday at her home in Oxford, southern England, publisher Faber & Faber said.

The English mystery writer penned some 20 books during her lifetime, and was perhaps best known for her popular series of detective novels featuring policeman and poet Adam Dalgliesh. Many of her crime stories were turned into films or television programs screened in the United States and Britain.

Faber & Faber, her publisher for more than 50 years, said in a statement that she had been "so very remarkable in every aspect of her life, an inspiration and great friend to us all. It is a privilege to publish her extraordinary books. Working with her was always the best of times, full of joy. We will miss her hugely."

Phyllis Dorothy James was born in Oxford on August 3, 1920. Her family didn't have enough money to send her to college, a reality she always regretted. It wasn't until she was almost 40 that she started creating mystery stories, and even then she only wrote in the early mornings before going to work at her job in the civil service.

For three decades she was employed in the National Health Service, and then in the police and criminal policy departments at the Home Office. She was able to draw on her experiences for inspiration for her writing.

James became hugely successful, selling millions of books around the world, but she was also criticized by some of her younger peers for writing mostly about middle-class murders, where well-educated individuals spent time painstakingly planning and agonizing over their crimes. Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard, for example, who was the hero of more than a dozen of James' novels, is a gentlemanly detective, who drives a Jaguar, writes poetry and loves jazz.

"She has pushed, as a modernist must, against the boundaries of the classical detective story," critic Julian Symons once wrote, adding that James could be "formidably realistic in a way that never would have been attempted… by any other Golden Age writer."

James also ventured beyond the confines of the mystery genre, and her 1992 dystopian science fiction novel, "The Children of Men," was turned into a critically-acclaimed film of the same name in 2006 starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and Michael Caine.

In 1987, the Crime Writers' Association gave PD James the Diamond Dagger award for lifetime achievement, and in 2005 the National Arts Club awarded her with the Medal of Honor for Literature. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II made her Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991.

nm/lw (AP, Reuters, AFP)