James is always a good read ( )

James's mystery is well conceived and written. We meet the jerk who will be murdered, and see reasons for almost anyone who had ever met him to have done it. The real reasons, however, will have to be uncovered, and then evidence found to prove it.

Dalgleish is his usual erudite but wounded self. Working with a marginally compatible detective, he doesn't display much emotional investment in the case, but simply goes about his work. As he does, we are given reasons to suspect several characters, some of whom seem to be delibreately unpleasant. In the end Dalgleish stumbles upon a piece of very good luck that enables him to finish off the case.

The book begins with a very atmospheric scene in a "clunch pit," a type of fen, but doesn't continue in that mode. We see Dalgleish's musings on the furnishings and artwork in characters' homes, presumably to emphasize his expertise and characterize the people with whom he is interacting. We don't see a lot of his thought processes.

The book is well written but not a standout among Ms. James's works. ( )

P. D. James has had many of her mysteries take place in small isolated communities where the murder victim could have been killed by several people that knew the victim. This time the setting is in a small village near Cambridge in a forensic science laboratory. The locked front door of the laboratory means that only the other staff members working at the laboratory could have killed Dr. Lorrimer, who was essentially a jerk. The author introduces all the other members of the staff, explains some of the reasons why they may have killed Dr. Lorimmer, and then Adam Dalgliesh arrives. He is methodical, discplined, and intelligent. He slowiy uncovers all the secrets that others have tried to keep hidden and in three days uncovers the killer of Dr. Lorrimer and of the second victim as well.

In later books, Adam Dalgliesh has assembled a special unit that goes with him to the scene of the crime. This time he has one other detective assigned to the case with him. They are not a particularly well matched team. But the lack of chemistry between them is not one of the emotional cores of the story as it is in many other mystery series. The mystery is the core of the story and how Dalgliesh uncovers the killer is what the book concentrates on. P. D. James does a great job setting up the story, slowly telling the personal stories of each of the characters, then lets you watch Dalgliesh unravel the plot.

The only real problem in the story is that a Perry Mason courtroom moment has to occur in order to catch the killer. For very little reason a character has to spill her guts at the very end in order for Dalgliesh to prove who the killer is. He knows who did it but has no proof until just like the killer used to do in the courtroom for Perry Mason, they spill their guts. It does detract from the book as a whole to have this happen, but it is still a well told story. ( )

spoilers somewhere toward the end

Despite the fact that this book is almost 25 years old, it was still exciting and didn’t seem too dated to me. Only a couple of times when a cell-phone would have made things a lot easier and less scary for some. It’s a very early Dalgliesh novel but he doesn’t enter the picture until well into the book. The first part is taken up with introducing various suspects and their possible motives for killing the despised Lorrimer. Everyone except the new receptionist, Brenda, hated him. He was an arrogant, controlling jerk so I don’t blame them. No one likes an unsympathetic victim.

Unlike other authors in the genre, James doesn’t home in on one suspect and make you go for it only to show you how wrong you were. Instead she puts out various clues and reveals conversations and events that can point to one or many. It’s up to the reader to figure out which. I really did think the killer would turn out to be a woman though. Either the writer, Stella, who we find out was unsuccessfully married to Lorrimer, or Susan the nervous employee’s wife. She seemed like she had backbone and would do what she had to in order to preserve her home and supposed happiness. Her silly husband Cliff was so frightened of Lorrimer that I couldn’t see him killing his tormenter no matter how awful it got. And Stella was drawn as a mysterious person who dropped things into conversations that made people wonder how she came to know such things.

But in the end it was the resident forensic examiner. Both he and Lorrimer had affairs with the lab director’s sister Domenica. They both used her complicated system of codes to meet her in the chapel on the lab grounds. Lorrimer taunted the other doctor and the doctor snapped and bashed him with a ready mallet in the biology lab. He staged a couple of phone calls to establish and alibi and burned his coat with the blood on it. His daughter, whom he had given a cup of cocoa laced with sedatives, hadn’t really drunk it and saw him burning the coat. She salvaged the unique buttons from it and help them hidden on her person. She eventually revealed this and they got the doctor to confess.