The third in James's long-running series featuring Adam Dalgliesh. I have read several books from this series, but I have not read them in order. I didn't enjoy this one as much as some of the more recent books in the series, and I'm not sure why. I do like James's writing. There's more going on than just the mystery plot, and I think that's what draws me to her works. Also, she is especially good at providing clues without giving too much away or being too frustrating with the use of obvious red herrings. ( )

The Adam Dalgliesh series continues in this book about the murder of a high profile mystery writer who is found dead in a dinghy. Closer examination shows that the victim's hands have been chopped off. Superintendent Dalgliesh wouldn't even have be involved in this murder if he hadn't been visiting his Aunt in Monksmere on the Suffolk coast.
The open lands, the steep cliffs, and the raging tides bring the setting off the Suffolk coast to life. Dalgliesh, who is not part of the investigation, must sit back and while the regional inspector handles the process of trying to discover what happens. The autopsy shows that the writer died of natural causes, but then what happened to his hands?
Dalgliesh does some of his own investigating and it leads to some interesting developments.
This is the third P.D. James book that I have read, and I'm not sure that I am going to continue the series. It may be the style or the out-of-date situations since they are written nearly 50 years ago. It was enjoyable, but maybe not memorable. ( )

Judging by the descriptions you’d be set for a book with lots of death and secrets. Not so. Maurice was famous only in his own mind. His secret life was that he wanted to be taken a lot more seriously than he was, so do achieve this he wanted to take his fortune and upon his death bequeath it to a trust so that a writers prize could be paid out of it. The voluptuous strip-tease artist is in the book for about 5 minutes while she tells Dalgliesh about her few minutes spent w/Seton on the night of his death. The dissolute heir isn’t really so dissolute. He’s not nearly intelligent enough for that. He’s inherited from Maurice but can’t take hold of the money until he marries. And the terrified woman waiting alone in her house turns out to be the author of the Seton brother’s deaths.

Sheila worked for Maurice as a secretary-cum-housemaid and she really hated him because he never saw her as a person much less as a woman. Because she could only get around by crutches and her legs were in braces, Maurice sometimes treated her like a machine. So she decided to kill him with the assistance of his brother. They married secretly so that the younger Seton would be able to fully inherit. But, she decided to poison him in the end. She had a good plan to make it appear a suicide but there was a flood caused by a huge storm and during her rescue she tried to kill Dalgliesh and another guy. The other guy knew she killed the Seton brothers and getting rid of him and Dalgliesh during the storm could look like they died because of the flood. Nope. Didn’t happen.

In this one, Ms. James really starts to get the barbs out when describing her various suspects and bit players. She does not pull any punches in revealing her character’s flaws. The only thing that I don’t like is how Adam’s aunt is portrayed as a thoroughly perfect and reasonable woman. She’s a spinster because the man she was engaged to was killed in a war. She never recovered and spent the rest of her life alone. That doesn’t seem to stable or reasonable to me. A bit of the Miss Havisham syndrome if you ask me. And she doesn’t help solve the case really. I don’t know why that was in the synopsis at all. Adam solves the crime despite it not being his case. And Adam is perfect too of course but I find him to be so detached that he seems hardly human sometimes.

Third book in the Adam Dalgliesh series. Dalgliesh needs a break, partly to recover from his last case and partly to think over his relationship with Deborah Riscoe. As is his habit, he goes to stay for a few days with his Aunt Jane, who lives in a small, remote coastal settlement populated mostly by writers. Naturally, he finds murder even in Monksmere.

In this case, Dalgliesh is not only not the investigating officer, but not officially involved in the case other than as a witness and relative/aquaintance of the suspects. But as someone with inside knowledge of the community and a direct connection, he can't but help but be involved with the local police as they attempt to solve the case.

It's all too clear that the only plausible suspects are the inhabitants of Monksmere, but that doesn't stop them trying to find some way to first deny that there has been a murder, and then that it is one of their number who was responsible. James carefully shows the differing and often eccentric personalities, the ways in which they manage to live in a sometimes uneasy tolerance of each other in a very small community, and the effect the murder has upon those relationships. With the victim being a writer of detective stories, and all the suspects being writers, there are multiple levels of meta going on.

I found the book an enjoyable read, though flawed in places. But it's far from her best work, and even if you don't like this one it would be worth trying one of the later books. It's also worth bearing in mind that the book was written in 1967, and social changes since then could make the book feel dated and implausible if you're not aware of this.

Discussion thread at my LiveJournal. ( )

My enjoyment of this book was not helped by the rather small font and tightly packed lines in the 1980s paperback version I read. I've enjoyed other, more recent, books in the Dalgleish series far more. I didn't really warm to any of the characters in this one, even the detective himself. ( )