A rising politician in Thatcher's government, Ivor Tesham, is having an exciting new affair with Hebe Furnal when he decides, fatally, to give her a birthday present to remember, entailing a practice known as 'adventure sex'.

There are deaths, but they are not so much deliberate as the result of hubris, ambition and greed. Set in 1990, this is more of a blistering political satire than a crime novel. With the publication of The Birthday Party, however, Vine has equalled those former triumphs. Her first two Barbara Vine novels, A Dark-Adapted Eye (1986) and A Fatal Inversion (1987), are among the finest crime novels of the 20th century and have not been bettered, ever since. Under this pen-name the plot lines are more psychologically driven, and she delights in the collision between society and the individual, where people are driven by primitive emotions such as hatred and lust. However, she saves her most disturbing writing for her alter ego Barbara Vine. James, and she tends to take a more political stance, in which crime is often rooted in poverty and social problems. Ruth Rendell's Wexford stories are generally far removed from the upper echelons of society favoured by P.D. Her scar is indeed removed but, shortly afterwards, so is she - and there is no shortage of suspects. Here, the dangerous element takes the form of Rhoda Gradwyn, a poisonous investigative journalist who decides to have a cosmetic operation to remove a disfiguring facial scar in Mr Chandler-Powell's private clinic in Cheverell Manor, Dorset.

The Private Patient is entirely within this comfortable, ordered tradition. What she likes to do - and does consistently well - is to give her readers exciting settings, plenty of suspense and the satisfying exercise of rational deduction. Her novels are filled with references to classical literature and the arts - Dalgliesh being a useful filter for this. James concerns herself with moral choices, good and evil, religion and culture. In the Adam Dalgliesh novels, we almost always find ourselves in grandiose, isolated settings where there is a murder or murders and Dalgliesh, the cultured gentleman detective and poet, together with his devoted team, solves the mystery (often having gathered the handful of suspects together, Cluedo-style, in the library or its equivalent).

Sayers and Agatha Christie (although she is a better practitioner than Christie). James is very much a traditionalist, writing in the long-established mould of such greats as Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. True, they are both at the top of their game and both in the House of Lords, but Baroness James of Holland Park is a Tory peeress, while Baroness Rendell of Babergh is on the Labour benches - and herein lies a clue as to their different styles of writing.

A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine