From: Tavia Chalcraft tavia@btinternet.com
PD James is a massively better writer, she has a great sense for place (eg The Black Tower, Devices & Desires). It's a shame she gave up writing her female detective Cordelia Gray (eg An Unsuitable Job for a Woman) as she was rather fun.
I've read Devices and Desires. Very well written, excellent sense of place, stunning depth of character etc, but .... I still prefer Cornwell, for all her irritations. The actual crimes and solving the crimes have a higher profile in the Scarpetta books, there is more emphasis on professional practice and procedural stuff (all the autopsy bits in the lab are great), and more focus on hard evidence. Also, Scarpetta evokes far better than James the sense of crime being almost random in who it affects.
Kay Scarpetta might be a MS, but in the earlier books there was a counterbalancing trend. Supremely competent career woman, excellent cook and homemaker, stand-in mother - and a chain-smoking neurotic who couldn't keep a man if she nailed his feet to the floor.
I discovered Cornwell through my mum, who seems to subsist almost entirely on crime fiction. Last time I went down to see her she put me on to Sue Grafton, amongst others. But strangely, she doesn't care much for my own all-time favourite, Raymond Chandler.
ObB7? Er, Mission to Destiny owes too much to Agatha Christie, who was crap. Well, crappish.
Neil