P. D. James understood evil. The evil that lurks in hearts, the evil that can lie dormant for decades, the evil that rears up and attracts the neighbors. Yes, that evil. This collection of previously published stories by the late author, SLEEP NO MORE, tells of victims and predators and the assortment of guilty parties that lie between.

The narrator of “The Victim” has been robbed of his masculinity when his beautiful blonde wife leaves him for a smoother, richer, bigger-muscled businessman. As their divorce proceeds, he, too, proceeds in his plan to kill the other man. The meticulous plot is brutally detailed with each purchase, each move in the community and in his life, calculated toward the satisfaction of feeling the knife thrust into his rival’s throat. On the anniversary of his divorce from his lovely wife, he discovers with immense satisfaction that the knife feels like butter going in, going in --- and then “a surprising fountain of golden blood.” But no P. D. James story ends where we think it will. The calculating murderer hid his preparation and deed very well, but he was not prepared for the final twist.

"If you are not familiar with [James'] writing, I am jealous of the discovery before you. Her exquisite machinations of people and motives, and her brilliant understanding of another time, another England, lie ahead."

In “The Murder of Santa Claus,” Charles Mickledore begins his icy tale with a poke at the “workmanlike old conventions” of mystery writers. After several nods to the brilliance of those mystery writers who have gone before him, Mickledore sets the scene for a violent death on Christmas Eve of 1939, the first Christmas of the war. He was a young lad then, and he had been invited to a step-uncle’s home for the holidays. After a cold train ride, his first glimpse of the Cotswold manor house, its three wings wrapped around a courtyard, was a mass of dull gray stone, blacked out, as was the whole village. “Under low broken clouds,” he adds, anticipating the end of that Christmas celebration.

This story ends 40 years later. James has completed the tale with no convicted murderer in hand; now the older, wiser Mickledore questions what the younger Mickledore might have known. This story is as much about the consequences of war and family separations and a young boy’s perceptions as it is about Santa Claus being killed by a bullet, a knife and a glass of whiskey laced with sleeping pills. Was justice done without benefit of a trial and proclamations of guilt? You decide.

There is sly humor in a very short tale, “Mr. Millcroft’s Birthday,” and we wish the party would never end. “The Yo-Yo” has edges of both surprise and sadness as an old man relives the tragedy of the “bright red, glossy, tactile and desirable” toy from his childhood. The other stories are equally compelling: James uses logic, history and greed to motivate her characters, and she never plays a maudlin note.

If you are already a fan of P. D. James, enjoy. If you are not familiar with her writing, I am jealous of the discovery before you. Her exquisite machinations of people and motives, and her brilliant understanding of another time, another England, lie ahead.