The New York Times called Shroud for a Nightingale “mystery at its best.”
The fourth novel in the Adam Dalgliesh series, aptly 
The novel is almost a horror story, albeit one cast in an unusually elegant prose, and with a mystery that is, of course, in the end solved by Adam Dalgliesh. But feeling of terror that is present all the way from the start of the novel, the horrors of deception and betrayal, long-buried secrets, repressed sexuality, a double murder, and the other black elements are not any less scaring because they are elegantly described. In a way, I would rather say it is the opposite.
The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed. Another student dies equally mysteriously. It is up to Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard to unmask a killer who has decided to prescribe murder as the cure for all ills.
This very suspense-filled novel by P.D. James is elegantly plotted and poses a mystery that will keep you guessing until the end as to the truth of the deaths and the truth about the nurses, the doctors, the instructors at this very deadly hospital. The complex case also displays Adam Dalgliesh in a very interesting manner. Shroud for a Nightingale is a wonderful crime novel. A classic crime fiction novel, P.D. James at her very best; provocative and thrilling, full of clues and red herrings. And, when it is revealed, a story with a somewhat shocking murder motive.
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