Only my second P D James after ‘Children of Men,’ and my first Commander Adam Dalgliesh. Murder(s) set in a theological college in Suffolk. Great story, plot and characters. I look forward to digging out many more in the series.

Back on my trash game

Why can I not give this zero stars?

Holy shit, this book was bad. One of the two worst I've ever read. I never, ever, ever review books, but I feel like I need to for this one.

This was written in 2001, so it's not old enough to excuse the metric ton of problematic things with this book. From equating homosexuality to pedophilia, having all of her characters sympathise with and refuse to condemn a pedophile priest (who went to prison for his actions), many instances of sexism, some homophobia, and notably an unfortunate passage of trying to be sensitive about an issue and ending up somewhat racist instead, putting religion and religious people on a pedestal, and making all her atheist characters unkind, disingenuous, mean, or plain evil, this has been a shit storm. PD James might have been in her eighties when she wrote this book, but this book makes her out to have been a bigot who thought the sun shone out of the asshole of the Anglican church. She couldn't seem to resist passing judgement on so many things in an absolutely blatant way, and her inspector acted as her mouthpiece more than once. Around halfway through, I decided to mark with a piece of paper all the pages where I thought the book was problematic. Result: 26 pieces of paper. Doing the math from where I first started keeping track, that's an average of one paper every 8,5 pages.

Spoilers now

That aside, the book itself was boring. Due to the author's bigotry, you could see where this was going from the moment she started to decide that a certain category of characters (or, well, going by how this reads as her personal opinions, a certain category of people altogether) were all evil, unless she had a massive plot twist in store. She did not. Thus all the atheists were bad people, except for the young and hot professor, but it was fine for her, because she revered the priests, the church, and Anglicanism. And she was also the love interest of what I would call a grotesquely shoe-horned romance, except that the level of interaction was just about the same as a couple meeting for the first time in a Victorian-era arranged marriage proposition. Dalgliesh was super judgemental character that I did not enjoy at all. The dumbass bit about Ronald Treeves killing himself over thinking that Karen Surtees was going to marry him was, well, stupid. And yet Dalgliesh is of the opinion that she should feel guilty about it despite not leading him on or anything. Wow. Not impressed. The apologizing for the pedophile priest stands out in particular. Every goddamn character is obsessed with saying how he's such a kind man, and it was 'only a bit of fondling, and not actual rape, so why are the little boys ruining the poor man's life?' I'm paraphrasing, but only because I didn't read it in English. It's this almost verbatim. The worst bit though was the confession via a letter written to the inspector. That's really lazy storytelling to me. But wait, that's not the actual worst part! The worst part is the killer's motive: he wanted his son to come face to face with the new, modern god: money! Now that's some actual cartoon vilain atheist there for you. Such a weak-ass motive, and such a goddamn preachy author. Let's not forget the incestuous brother and sister. The guy was fine, because he liked working for the priests, and he seemed kind of simple-minded, but of course the sister, who was an atheist and enjoyed casual sex, was seen as a raging bitch.

What a shitty fucking book. I wish I could get these hours back. I only finished this because I'm too stubborn for my own good, and I spent money on this book, so I felt obligated. This was a terrible book, I rate it absolute zero. I am stupider for having read it, and I feel like I should burn this garbage. I usually donate books I've read, but I might make an exception for this one and throw it in the recycling bin instead. This is an atrocious book, don't read it.

P. D. James continues to write very literate and interesting mysteries featuring her well-read inspector Adam Dalgliesh. This recent edition has a great story, although the motivations of the murderer left me disbelieving. His rationale just did not seem especially valid, but the scenarios and characters are complex and interesting. The setting for this novel is St. Anselm's, a small theological college on a lonely stretch of the Anglian coast, so isolated that a fallen tree on the only road to the college can effectively block all access to it. The students are housed in an old Victorian mansion with all sorts of nooks and crannies. Increasingly threatened by the financial burdens on the college, the local archdeacon wants to close the college -- he becomes one of the murder victims -- but his past ties with one of the teachers make his judgments suspect. All of the professors and some of the ordinands (those studying to become Anglican priests) have nefarious events in their past or antipathy toward one or other of the rest of the characters. A local police inspector is there for a while, recuperating from psychological problems, and he has reason to hate the archdeacon, an antipathy reciprocated because of the investigator’s investigation into the death of the archdeacon's first wife and his ongoingl certainty of the archdeacon's culpability. Dalgliesh becomes involved because he had been asked to investigate the ostensible suicide of one of the ordinands who had apparently killed himself by lying under an outcropping of sand and then causing it to collapse suffocating himself. Dalgliesh has nostalgic memories of the college, having spent some time there in his youth. By the end of the investigation, several others have been killed in order to hide a secret — and this is where the plot falls apart, I think — that would have, by necessity, have come out in any case. In a portrayal of human evil, James reveals a nasty mess of intertwined jealousy, greed, deceit, anger and revenge, not to ignore murder. The ultimate cause of the murders is the endowment that, if the college is closed, will pass to the remaining professors, or to the heir of the Arbuthnot estate. It gets wonderfully complicated, and James's nonpareil writing holds one enthralled right to the end despite my earlier caveat.

I get annoyed with PD James because of the feeling that surrounds her that says that she's head and shoulders better than every other crime writer around. That and the fact that she only writes about terribly posh people as if that's all there is in the world. This is a version of the very traditional English detective story - deaths in a small community where only an insider can be guilty. The story is nothing terribly inventive and there are a hundred crime writers out there writing tales set around much better plots.

The characters here are pretty well drawn though; I find them all slightly unbelievable just because of who they are but they do appear real all the same. There's a sense that James is taking the mickey out of herself when someone comments that not all of the twenty students at the theological college the book is set at have had priviledged upbringings - one of them actually came through the state school system.

I haven't read any James for quite a while, apart from rereading the two Cordelia Grey books on audio last year, I read most of them as a teenager and I'm not sure I'd be able to put up with the characters for long enough to read them all again now. I always find Inspector Kate Miskin to be a shadow of what she could be. Her background is one of poverty and working her way up the ranks of the Met and it never rings true. Kate sometimes feels out of place in the circles Dalgleish moves in, both social and literary, but I always feel she's just been put in for show. Perhaps it's just that at the end of the day she is the sidekick and Dalgleish is the main attraction but I do wish James had made her more than she has.

This isn't a bad book just not a terribly exciting, interesting or innovative one.

The first half or so is wonderful, atmospheric, crowded with red herrings and churchy things (grudges, art, candles, music, priests doing bad things, a questionable parchment). The second half, with Dalgliesh's cracker-jack team arriving to investigate a brutal killing (or more) left me underwhelmed. It's like the novel's carefully constructed atmosphere dissipated and the necessary but, at least in part, improbable mechanics of the genre took over.

For those readers familiar with P.D. James, you know that the author can sometimes go on and on describing scenes and characters. This is not necessarily a bad feature because it creates, as with the music in a movie, the mood for what is coming. Sometimes it even works without being overbearing.

Death in Holy Orders is another Commander Dalgliesh mystery, which begins with the death of a student at St. Anselm's Theological College - an English High Church establishment. Dalgliesh is assigned more of less informally to investigate the death after-the-fact, as the cause of death was already determined to be accidental, and the body had been cremated. More characters, including other students, Priest / Instructors, visitors, to the College and Dalgliesh's investigative team all have their own [interesting] stories. And P.D. James tells it well.

For fans of James, this mystery should not be missed.

Published in 2001, this is the eleventh Adam Dalgliesh novel, and a slightly odd addition to the series. Like many in the series, this is set in an isolated, rural community - in this case, Saint Anselm's - an Anglo-Catholic theological college. When an unpopular student is found dead on the beach, his wealthy father asks for an investigation. Dalgliesh had visited the college as a boy and so heads off to see whether the death was an accident, or something more suspicious.

There are some bizarre storylines in this novel, including a priest who went to prison for crimes against young boys, who P.D. James seems to defend, through her characters and another side story of incest. We have a good number of suspects and motives, but it was difficult not to feel that this included too many of the author's own personal views, and excuses, for both the characters and the Church. Overall, I am enjoying this series, but this is certainly not a favourite and - at times - something of an uncomfortable read.

P.D. James has triumphed again. She writes a brilliant story in beautifully constructed language.
I have read many of her books in the past and this one did not fail to impress.
The story is set in an Anglican Theological College.
It all begins with a suspected suicide of one of the students and then the sudden death of a heart attack of one of the women working there.
No foul play is suspected.
Inspector Dalgliesh (who had spent time at the college as a young man) is asked by the young boy's father to investigate his son's death.
Nothing seems to be amiss until a violent murder is committed, followed soon after by another.
Apparently all is not as it first appeared.
Are all the deaths somehow linked?
The mysteries of the past are slowly exposed taking the reader on an exciting journey to the eventual climax of the story.

Death In Holy Orders by P.D. James
☀️☀️☀️

May 2019. Natural pair with THE NAME OF THE ROSE. Halfway through, crisp and fun. Finished, lots of fun, but not a genre intend to dedicate much time to.

I read P D James avidly for many years, until one day I just could not stomach her extreme right-wing contempt for every non-Dalgleish character. However, I've have always acknowledged her great skill as a writer, which finally brought me back to this book recently.
Yes, the woman can write. The setting is fascinating, the characters are pretty good. She really conveys the beauty of the landscape, and the tragic destruction of a way of life dedicated to knowledge, peace and clarity of purpose.

Dalgleish is as constipated and tight-jawed as ever. If not for the adulation given him by the other characters, I might mistake him for a man who is so tied up in his own dignity that he is a walking corpse. Honestly, track any conversation he has in the novel. He barely speaks, and what he does say is as boring as batshit.
However, my main grievance here is that the murderer's motivations make NO SENSE! Okay, I get that the motivation is to get the seminary shut down so his son will inherit a metric fuckton of money. So why viciously murder the guy who is doing everything he can to shut down the seminary? WHY the secrecy about the marriage? Why kill the first victim to keep her quiet about the marriage?? Surely it will have to come out if the son is to inherit. What difference does it make to keep it secret? I just can't make sense of it at all, and it's really bugging me.
Oh, and the staunch sympathy for the plight of the poor pedophile priest? Yes, he was such a victim! Wait, WHAT?!?! Seriously, WTF?