P. D. James was an English crime writer best known for her 14 crime novels featuring police commander and poet Adam Dalgliesh. She also wrote two more crime novels featuring her female detective Cordelia Gray, the mystery novel 'Innocent Blood', the dystopian science fiction 'The Children of Men', and the Jane Austen fan fiction 'Death Comes to Pemberley'. Her non-fiction works include 'The Maul and the Pear Tree', 'Talking About Detective Fiction', and her own autobiography 'Time to Be in Earnest'. She had originally started writing 'Cover Her Face', a whodunit that turned into her debut novel, as a practice for a serious novel she had long intended to write. However, she soon realized that she could write about almost everything while remaining within the crime genre. While she became known as the new 'Queen of Crime' after Agatha Christie, she considered the classic model of "prettifying and romanticizing murder" "unrealistic", and according to some, was instrumental in improving the literary level of the modern detective novel. James, who worked for years in the criminal justice system and with the National Health Service, is known for her believable characters and her skillful depiction of interesting crime scenes.