The Victim Read online

Kazuo Ishiguro: Come Rain or Come Shine

  P. D. James: The Victim

  Thom Jones: Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine

  Claire Keegan: The Forester’s Daughter

  David Means: A River in Egypt

  John McGahern: The Country Funeral

  Lorrie Moore: Terrific Mother

  Edna O’Brien: Paradise

  Flannery O’Connor: A Good Man Is Hard to Find

  Julia O’Faolain: Daughters of Passion

  Sylvia Plath: Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom

  Sally Rooney: Mr Salary

  Akhil Sharma: Cosmopolitan

  About the Author

  P. D. James (1920–2014) was born in Oxford and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. All that experience was used in her novels. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts and served as a Governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, where she was Chairman of the Literary Advisory Panel, on the Board of the British Council and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She was an Honorary Bencher of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. She won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award and The National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature (US). She received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983 and was created a life peer in 1991. In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors, stepping down from the post in August 2013.

  Copyright

  First published in this single edition in 2019

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  First published in Winter Crimes 5, ed. Virginia Whitaker in 1973

  First published by Faber in Sleep No More in 2017

  This ebook edition first published in 2019

  All rights reserved

  © P.D. James, 1973

  Series design by Faber

  Cover illustration © Pete Adlington

  The right of P.D. James to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–35468–9