{"id":149675,"date":"2020-12-25T11:00:28","date_gmt":"2020-12-25T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=149675"},"modified":"2020-12-11T16:55:10","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T21:55:10","slug":"murder-most-foul-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/12\/25\/murder-most-foul-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Murder Most Foul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re away until January 4, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2020. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_146560\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/james.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-146560\" class=\"size-full wp-image-146560\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/james.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"750\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/james.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/james-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/james-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-146560\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">P.\u2009D. James. Photo: Ulla Montan.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cDeath seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of innocent enjoyment than any other single subject.\u201d So wrote Dorothy L. Sayers in 1934. She was, of course, thinking of murder; not the sordid, messy and occasionally pathetic murders of real life but the more elegantly contrived and mysterious concoctions of the detective novelist. To judge, too, from the universal popularity of the genre, it isn\u2019t only the Anglo-Saxons who share this enthusiasm for murder most foul. From Greenland to Japan, millions of readers are perfectly at home in Sherlock Holmes\u2019s claustrophobic sanctum at 221B Baker Street, Miss Marple\u2019s charming cottage at St. Mary Mead, and Lord Peter Wimsey\u2019s elegant apartment in Piccadilly. There is nothing like a potent amalgam of mystery and mayhem to make the whole world kin.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/03\/murder-most-foul\/\">Read more &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>P. D. James explains her attraction to detective stories and highlights her favorite practitioners of the genre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2027,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68282],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2020"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Murder Most Foul by P. D. James<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"P. D. 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