Murders in a small museum.

Classic Ruth Rendell with twists and moral justice. ( )

P D James spends copious amounts of time setting up her stories: the first 150 pages contain no suggestion of a murder. Just when one begins to feel frustrated, the novel begins to take off and, from then, one finds oneself gripped right through to page541.
The tortuous entrée is necessary because, once the crime has been committed, the writing is pared to the bone. Commander Dalgleish is surprised to be called in to a museum of the thirties where one of the owning family has been burned to death in his car. Needless to say, this is not as straight forward as it initially seems. An excellent crime. ( )

Well done but fundamentally average who-dunnit police procedural.

An oddball museum is run by three siblings and the terms of trust require unanimous agreement on all decisions. When the lease comes up for renewal the dissenting elder brother is found in a burning car. The Inspecter Dalgliesh is called in to investigate. The list of possible suspects quickly mounts up from the lowliest garden boy through to the surviving brother and sister. Dalgliesh and co gently question their way through them all, until they are confident of the name and merely need sufficient proof. Meanwhile Dalgliesh's love life interupts the story.

It is well plotted, the eventual suspect is entirely unobvious even upon occasional re-reading but in retrospect there are sufficient clues for an astute reader to at least keep up with the detectives. The voice of the story moves about Kate Miskin is the usual 'main' character but we also spend a lot of time with the various witnesses especially housekeep Tully Clatton. The continual cycling of new detectives onto the team provides it's usual distractions which serve to maintain continuity between this and the previous books. It is quite possible to read the series out of order, or even just as standalone works.

James' pacing is generally slow and descriptive, so the story rolls along without much dramatic tension or gore or violence. The characters are all fairly rounded with plenty of human quirks - which sets up a few nice red herrings before the true culprit is revealed.

Enjoyable but nothing special.
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Outstanding mystery by the indefagitable James. This one has quite a bit of suspense at the end. It makes you want to read every book in the series. This is my third and I plan to read them all. ( )