P.D. James is a successful mystery writer. I just finished The Lighthouse. I expected a nice British mystery, which it was, but I was also pleasantly surprised by some nice sentences, sentences that made my stop and read them again.
There is a nice sentence at the end of this paragraph, but I cannot pull the sentence out. It needs to be read in context:
They walked across the headland path to Seal Cottage without speaking. Behind them the lit window of the great house and the distant pinpoints of light from the cottages only intensified the silence. With the setting of the sun, the illusion of summer was erased. This was the air of late October, still unseasonably mild but with the first chill of autumn, the air faintly scented, as if the dying light had drawn up from the head land the concentrated sweetness of the day. The darkness would have been absolute but for the stars. Never had they seemed to Kate more multitudinous, more glittering or so close. They made of the furry darkness a mysterious luminosity, so that, looking down, she could see the narrow path as a faintly gleaming ribbon in which individual blades of grass glittered like small spears, silvered with light.
I think "furry darkness" needs more work, but it was a nice paragraph with a nice closing sentence. This was on page 215. The following long sentence describes transporting body. Kate is a female detective, Benton a male detective, and Maycroft is a civilian. This is one sentence. It reminds me of the generative style promoted by Francis Christensen. It is a nicely done sentence, found on page 308.
To Kate the whole scene was unreal, a bizarre and alien rite of passage: the fitful sunlight less strong now and a lively breeze lifting Maycroft's hair, the bright green of the cope like a gaudy shroud, herself and Benton grave-faced mourners walking behind the lumbering buggy, the body jolting from time to time as the wheels hit a hummock, the silence broken only by the sound of their progress, by the ever-present murmur of the sea and the occasional almost human shrieking of a flock of gulls which followed them, wings beating, as if this strange cortege offered a hope of scraps of bread.
Finally, the closing sentences of the book were satisfying. Emma is Dalgliesh's girl friend. It is Kate thinking at this time.
For Dalgliedsh and Emma, sitting behind her, this day was a new beginning. Perhaps for her, too, the future could be rich with infinite possibilities. Resolutely she turned her face to the east, to her job, to London, as the helicopter soared above a white tumble of clouds into the shining air.
That last sentence was a generative sentence after the fashion of Christensen. It is not a long sentence, but a generative sentence does not have to be long. It was very nicely done, appearing on page 383.
Google
Francis Christensen a generative rhetoric of the sentence
if you want to learn more about Francis Christensen.
It is a treat to find good writing along with good story telling!
Robert
