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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
Honestly, Dalgliesh just isn't giving me the warm fuzzies. I've seen so many rave reviews for this series of books and people who go on about how they love Dalgliesh, etc., but this is the third book and so far I am not feeling it. This particular book was very depressing, with an entire cast of unlikable characters and an incredibly morose Dalgliesh, who magically had the solution for the mystery "come" to him when he was drifting off to sleep... but as the reader we don't get to find out what that solution is until after Dalgliesh has told at least two other characters (and I have to sit through scenes like, 'He outlined his theory to the inspector...' without actually getting to find out what the theory is, which always annoys me a LOT), and instead have to wait for the big confessional scene at the end. The actual method for the murder was genuinely disturbing to me, and also I never really understood how Dalgliesh would have magically thought of this being what happened. We never find out what clues led him to realize this conclusion. While it fit all of the clues, it definitely seemed like a stretch that someone would figure it out.
The red herrings were done well and the stormy seaside was an excellent scene, but all in all this was just a rather dreary read. I'm giving Dalgliesh another book to try and redeem himself, but if Shroud for a Nightingale is just as much of a downer as the first three books, I am moving on with my life!
The red herrings were done well and the stormy seaside was an excellent scene, but all in all this was just a rather dreary read. I'm giving Dalgliesh another book to try and redeem himself, but if Shroud for a Nightingale is just as much of a downer as the first three books, I am moving on with my life!
Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh had been looking forward to a quiet holiday at his aunt's cottage on Monksmere Head, one of the furthest-flung spots on the remote Suffolk coast
What I love about this is you know the bad guy. You genuinely do. But she does such a good job of convincing you otherwise that you fall for it and in the end you look back and you are like... wait what????
Dalgliesh is supposed to be on vacation when a crime breaks up his leisurely interlude. A mystery writer is found at the bottom of a dinghy, dead and with both hands chopped off.
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 an oddly meta-fictional whodunnit, with the victim being a writer of detective fiction, whose corpse is seen in the first chapter floating on a boat off the Sussex coast in exactly the same manner (and words) as a character later says she mentioned to the victim as a good opening chapter for a detective novel...
I enjoyed this novel where Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh takes a holiday to visit his aunt in a small coastal village in Sussex, and being unable to get away from his day job. It described small-town mentality rather well, and showed how different British life was, even fifty years ago, not to mention the lack of empathy shown to the disabled, with one character constantly being referred to (both in the narrative and within the story) as a cripple, for being in a wheelchair.
As usual, I completely failed to figure out whodunnit, but I don't feel so bad this time, since a major clue was hidden until the very end.
I enjoyed this novel where Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh takes a holiday to visit his aunt in a small coastal village in Sussex, and being unable to get away from his day job. It described small-town mentality rather well, and showed how different British life was, even fifty years ago, not to mention the lack of empathy shown to the disabled, with one character constantly being referred to (both in the narrative and within the story) as a cripple, for being in a wheelchair.
As usual, I completely failed to figure out whodunnit, but I don't feel so bad this time, since a major clue was hidden until the very end.