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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
Okay, mea culpa: it's pretty galling that my degree of ignorance in British crime fiction had previously categorised the works of P.D. James as "cozy mysteries" (with pretty much no justification other than their settings and my own pretension). For that, now that I have actual experience in the content of her books, I can ruefully state that holy shit was I off the mark. Calling a book like this "cozy" is like calling a grizzly bear "cuddly". Even for what an idyllically picturesque ye-olde-English seaside location it may be set in, Unnatural Causes is a devilishly dark, gloomy, violent, and incredibly impressive whodunit that I really loved and which makes me want to dive into a lot more of her books in the future (hopefully with a much more open heart than I've had about British mysteries in the past). It's not all tea parties and bodies in the library, folks.
It was okay. The mystery was good. Somethings definitely did not age well and it was hard to get into it at some points because of it.
This is the first of P.D. James' Dalgliesh novels that I have read, although I read one of her non-series novels, INNOCENT BLOOD, earlier this year. UNNATURAL CAUSES is a much earlier work than this impressive book and its clear that at this stage James was still learning her craft.
The book is set on a stormy Suffolk headland, and James excels in her invocation of the hostile and isolating environment in which Dalgliesh takes an ill-fated holiday. UNNATURAL CAUSES was written in the late 60s but in many ways the book harks back to an earlier age, not just in its largely upper-middle class milieu, but in its Golden Age plotting: small circle of suspects, dodgy alibis, wide range of motives etc.
Written in the year that homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK, the book's descriptions of gay life are rather jarring, and there is some lazy stereotyping of disabled people. But this was a different era, and I believe James's novels, if not her voting record in the Lords, suggested that her position evolved somewhat.
Ultimately, what lets this book down is not its old-fashioned morality, but its rushed and convoluted denouement which detracts from the realism that James invokes from her descriptions of the Suffolk setting.
The book is set on a stormy Suffolk headland, and James excels in her invocation of the hostile and isolating environment in which Dalgliesh takes an ill-fated holiday. UNNATURAL CAUSES was written in the late 60s but in many ways the book harks back to an earlier age, not just in its largely upper-middle class milieu, but in its Golden Age plotting: small circle of suspects, dodgy alibis, wide range of motives etc.
Written in the year that homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK, the book's descriptions of gay life are rather jarring, and there is some lazy stereotyping of disabled people. But this was a different era, and I believe James's novels, if not her voting record in the Lords, suggested that her position evolved somewhat.
Ultimately, what lets this book down is not its old-fashioned morality, but its rushed and convoluted denouement which detracts from the realism that James invokes from her descriptions of the Suffolk setting.
This is a re-read. I remembered why the hands were cut but didn't remember who did it and why. I liked the awkwardness of Dalgliesh, his not quite envy but definitely uneasiness at not being in charge of the investigation. Still, in the end, he solves the puzzle and puts one up the poor inspector who tried really hard to solve it first. The cast of characters are mostly caricatures and not very interesting. They are more like chess pieces than fully developed persons. The ending is rushed and very deus ex machina and a very cliché trope to our 21th century eyes.
This was okay. I don't particularly like Dagliesh, but it was more that I didn't connect to the events.. at one point he says he had known who and how for a while...but James only ever lets the reader know when he discovers the how. It felt like a cop out to say Dagliesh had known who, because there's no explanation anywhere on how he made the connections...actually, even in the end there's no explanation as to how Dagliesh figured any of it out so it makes me wonder what connections there actually were.
UGH. So I'm coming at this as someone who generally likes PD James' books - this is maybe the 6th I've read - and I've read tons of Golden Age mysteries. That being said, this book is so ableist that it's painful. And that's not even mentioning the sexism and homophobia. I expect some amount of all of that given the time period, but when it takes over the plot of the book it's really inexcusable.
Sylvia Kedge is treated horribly throughout the book. The other characters all either dislike her or pity her, usually forget about her, and consider her to be ugly and sexless. There is one line in the book that sums it up pretty well, saying "Like so many of the disabled she was at once patronised and exploited." Kedge herself thinks,"she wondered whether it was worse to be feared or pitied."So James can see what is happening here, but doesn't go anywhere good with that self-knowledge.
It's sort of an established tactic for mystery writers to describe all of the suspects in ways that make them sound morally distasteful and this sometimes makes it hard to differentiate the author's prejudices from the characters' prejudices. So at first I gave James a bit of the benefit of the doubt that she was just showing her characters' flaws. But things went downhill. Disability is treated poorly pretty much as a rule in the books I've read by James' and Golden Age authors. The same tired misconceptions arise again and again. The question of whether the disabled person's life is worth living, the reduction to a sexless object, ignoring their agency and discounting them as incapable of having committed the crime until surprise! they are stronger and smarter than they look.
Here we come upon the Bitter Cripple trope, where Kedge (quite rightly!) resents how she has been ignored and exploited her whole life. But instead of treating these grievances as reasonable, James instead casts her as an unhinged killer whose resentments have driven her to murder in an attempt to finally have some control over her own life. Ugh. I'm so tired of this trope. Sorry for the spoiler, but if I knew how grossly ableist the book was going into it I wouldn't have bothered reading it.
Ok, a brief mention of somethings I liked: Dalgliesh's relationship with his aunt is touching and I enjoyed it getting so much screen time. It is suggestive though that the only woman he is comfortable with is one who is entirely self-sufficient and makes no demands of him. I liked her though, she is smart and likes to be left alone to paint and record bird behaviors. It was also interesting to see Dalgliesh as a 2nd in command to the local police Inspector since he is technically on vacation. The tension between him and Inspector Reckless adds an interesting shape to some of the scenes.
Content Notes: Dismembered hands, somewhat graphic description of corpses, severe ableism, period sexism, period homophobia, period racism.
Sylvia Kedge is treated horribly throughout the book. The other characters all either dislike her or pity her, usually forget about her, and consider her to be ugly and sexless. There is one line in the book that sums it up pretty well, saying "Like so many of the disabled she was at once patronised and exploited." Kedge herself thinks,"she wondered whether it was worse to be feared or pitied."So James can see what is happening here, but doesn't go anywhere good with that self-knowledge.
It's sort of an established tactic for mystery writers to describe all of the suspects in ways that make them sound morally distasteful and this sometimes makes it hard to differentiate the author's prejudices from the characters' prejudices. So at first I gave James a bit of the benefit of the doubt that she was just showing her characters' flaws. But things went downhill. Disability is treated poorly pretty much as a rule in the books I've read by James' and Golden Age authors. The same tired misconceptions arise again and again. The question of whether the disabled person's life is worth living, the reduction to a sexless object, ignoring their agency and discounting them as incapable of having committed the crime until surprise! they are stronger and smarter than they look.
Here we come upon the Bitter Cripple trope, where Kedge (quite rightly!) resents how she has been ignored and exploited her whole life. But instead of treating these grievances as reasonable, James instead casts her as an unhinged killer whose resentments have driven her to murder in an attempt to finally have some control over her own life. Ugh. I'm so tired of this trope. Sorry for the spoiler, but if I knew how grossly ableist the book was going into it I wouldn't have bothered reading it.
Ok, a brief mention of somethings I liked: Dalgliesh's relationship with his aunt is touching and I enjoyed it getting so much screen time. It is suggestive though that the only woman he is comfortable with is one who is entirely self-sufficient and makes no demands of him. I liked her though, she is smart and likes to be left alone to paint and record bird behaviors. It was also interesting to see Dalgliesh as a 2nd in command to the local police Inspector since he is technically on vacation. The tension between him and Inspector Reckless adds an interesting shape to some of the scenes.
Content Notes: Dismembered hands, somewhat graphic description of corpses, severe ableism, period sexism, period homophobia, period racism.
[1997]. The third of the Dalgliesh mysteries, written in 1967, where he gets mixed up in a mystery while visiting his aunt, his only living relative. The writing was good, the murderer a surprise, and the mystery generally interesting—but it did not seize and grip me.
2020 My parents really like P.D. James, but she has never gripped me. Different tastes.
2020 My parents really like P.D. James, but she has never gripped me. Different tastes.
Still love P.D. James, still love Adam Dalgliesh. It's intriguing to me that James has written this series over such a long period of time, always setting it in the present day, never worrying about the passage of time. In an age when many writers (and movie producers) feel the need to explain away every bit of mystery, it's fun to not have to think about some practicalities. When you read P.D. James, you know who her characters are, you know the story will be good, the reasoning tight. You don't need to know how Adam Dalgliesh has stayed young since 1962.
I thought I had figured out the murderer early on in this book, but I soon realized I was wrong. Above all, I feel that James is true to human nature in her characterizations. Even minor characters feel real. There are archetypes, but not stereotypes.
I'm eager to read more P.D. James.
I thought I had figured out the murderer early on in this book, but I soon realized I was wrong. Above all, I feel that James is true to human nature in her characterizations. Even minor characters feel real. There are archetypes, but not stereotypes.
I'm eager to read more P.D. James.
PD James does write well, as friends had told me; however I'm not sure how much Literary Writing I require in a mystery novel. I did find myself skipping. However the mechanism at the heart of the mystery was great!