داستانش در کل بد نبود؛ شخصیت ها هم محدود اما ملموس بودن؛ اما من لذت خاصی ازش نبردم. یکی از مشکلات تصور مکان ماجرا و اون دماغه و ... بود - واقعا در تصور اوصاف شکست خوردم تو این کتاب. حس می کنم نوع روایت و تعلیق ماجرا هم چنگی به دل نمی زد

اما مهمترین مشکل - که شاید باقی مشکلاتم هم از دل اون براومده باشن - ترجمه بود. بی تعارف بگم ترجمه ترجمه ی بدی بود. اغراق نیست بگم از هر چهار جمله یه جمله مشکل داشت - یا حذف شده بود یا درست ترجمه نشده بود. خلاصه اینکه ترجمه داغون کرده بود کتابو. البته این داغونی اگر صرفا به متن فارسی نگاه کنید چندان به چشم نمی آد - مگه بواسطه ی ابهام های مفهومی گاه به گاه

حتی عنوان کتاب هم درس ترجمه نشده، نویسنده در عنوان داره به مرگی به ظاهر طبیعی اشاره می کنه؛ یعنی مرگ به "علل طبیعی" نبوده بلکه به "علل غیرطبیعی" بوده

With the recent death of PD James, I felt the need to reread some of my favourites of hers. Unnatural Causes, third in the Adam Dalgleish series, is one of them. With what I think to be one of the most perfectly written opening chapters of any mystery novel I have ever read, Unnatural Causes does not disappoint. The irony of the subject matter in this one is effective. Crime novelist found dead in exactly the manner described to him by another author acquaintance and the majority of suspects in this one are all also writers or connected with the industry. Including, again ironically, Adam Dalgleish, poet extraordinaire, who is on holiday in Suffolk where the dead author lived and eventually turned up after his death. Another interesting angle in this story is the fact that Adam, one of the best Scotland Yard detectives around is forced to take a backseat as an ordinary citizen to the assigned officer in the case, Detective Reckless. Dalgleish's frustration with having to defer to Reckless who, himself, is a very good investigator sets the tone for the whole novel and Dalgleish's irritation and annoyance with not being in charge of this complex investigation is palpable. In this one, definitely the beginning is more satisfying than the end with its beautifully written first chapter and the introduction of an interesting collection of characters and a most puzzling mystery. The end, in contrast, leaves one feeling a bit flat with the murderer, finally revealed, not being overly believable in the role. Overall though, a most excellent offering by the late, great PD James.

Digital Audiobook read by Penelope Dellaporte


In book three of the mystery series, Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh has a holiday planned. He’ll spend ten blissfully uneventful days with his spinster aunt at her seaside cottage on the Suffolk coast. It’s a well-earned break, and his plans include nothing more taxing that long walks, tea by the fire, and some personal reflection. And then a headless, handless body washes ashore.

I came late to the PD James party, but here I am and I’m ready to enjoy myself. Dalgliesh is a marvelous character – a supremely competent detective, astute, observant, and intelligent, but also sensitive to nuance and willing to reflect on numerous possibilities.

James gives us several possible suspects and enough red herrings to keep the reader guessing. There’s also a thrilling scene involving a major storm that puts everyone in danger. I hadn’t identified the culprit before the reveal. A totally satisfying mystery. I’ll continue with this series.

Penelope Dellaporte does a fine job of narrating the audiobook.

This is the third Adam Dalgleish mystery, and I liked it much better than the first two. It has a more interesting set of characters, and a more ingenious plot. Set on the Suffolk coast, there is a good atmosphere of place, and Dalgleish himself seems slightly more interesting than in the first two books. I will probably persevere and read some more.

A masterpiece from the mistress of crime. Her writing is sublime: conjuring up the feeling, smell and sound of every place described. This is an unusual Adam Dalgliesh mystery because he has to play second fiddle to a more junior local detective. The original crime happens when Adam is on holiday, staying with his favourite aunt. The plot is strange and the characters bizarre: a bunch of back-biting writers. I wonder where that idea came from? A brilliant book, thoroughly recommended.

This book has a great opening paragraph. It is gross but has a great descriptions of a murdered victim set adrift in a dinghy – a “corpse without hands.” (page 7)
This Adam Dalgliesh mystery is a fairly fast-paced read with interesting plot twists and an odd (and mostly unappealing) assortment of characters. On vacation at his Aunt Jane’s, Adam has personal issues to contemplate when he is plunged into the bizarre situations of looking on as the local police officer investigates the murder of his Aunt’s neighbor. The storyline includes a gripping storm sequence where Adam must escape a cottage via the rooftop before it is swept away into the sea.

I was enjoying this one for such a long time. The mystery surrounding how the victim came to die, how they came to be where they were found, who might have a motive, etc. was really intriguing and had me hooked and the fact that Dalgliesh wasn't the investigating officer made this one an even more interesting proposition. Ultimately, though, I found it unsatisfying. The ending was a real let down for me. I like a murder mystery where, by the end, you know how the detective worked it all out and this element of the plot was lacking. Four stars because of the enjoyment of the mystery itself but I almost feel like I'm being too generous given the ending; it could so easily have been five.

First, I did not read this edition. I am reading this on the bundle P. D. James's Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries: Cover Her Face, A Mind to Murder, Unnatural Causes, Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, and Death of an Expert Witness. To be honest, I picked it up because it was cheap and I was in the market for some British mysteries. I did not know then how much I would like James' writing style. I find it better than most mysteries, which, after all, are supposed to be about plot.

I also like her characterizations. I'm less sure that these are actually as good as I'm finding them. In this installment, I was able to visualize the characters. I have a better understanding of Dalgliesh - the man himself, not just the detective.

The novel opens with a man lying in the bottom of a small boat, obviously dead, and with his hands cut off at the wrists. Little blood, he was dead before the mutilation. We soon learn that this was Maurice Seton, detective novelist. The small community on the Suffolk coast is made up of other authors, one of whom has suggested to Seton that he open a novel with a man lying dead in the bottom of a boat with his hands cut off. It's hard not to be intrigued.

Are all of her novels this good? Because this is another 4-stars, and possibly better than the previous two of the series. I'm so glad to be reading these with a group here on Goodreads - one a month. I look forward to the next installment.

This book was published in 1967 and was the 3rd book in the Dalgliesh series. Back then a mystery novel was expected to be in the 200 page range, and this one was at 205 pages less than half as long as the last P.D. James book I read which was written in the 21st Century.

I'm pretty sure that my feeling that the book was ended as quickly as the author could arrange it was, in part, due to the fact that she only had 200 pages available to her. The explanation of the mystery is made by a taped confession of the murderer which is listened to after she has died attempting to kill an additional two people. During the confession you discover that the murderer has actually killed more people than you were originally aware of.

Although I can understand why the author needed to end her book this abruptly because of a lack of space, I still am giving the book only 3 stars. It truly is not as good a book as her later work.

5 stars

An Unnatural James!

"Unnatural Causes" is a classic whodunnit that, no joke, Agatha Christie herself could have written. Although there are typical James elements, it's not her style at all. It is more a satire on the detective genre and its writers than a "genuine" Dalgliesh mystery.

How so?

In addition to the Christie-feel is constant over-description of the angry Suffolk coast that reads like a farcical take on emotionally hysterical elements in Golden Age crime fiction (= it was a dark and stormy night when Lord Bigsby was murdered!! BOOM! CRASH! BLOOD!).

There is also non-stop and utterly hilarious depictions of envious, backbiting, egotistical novelists that only a writer surrounded by the scoundrels could portray so well and who are now cast as the bewildered villagers in a typical cozy mystery. (The writers are made into the characters.)

Put those all together and you've got not only a highly entertaining whodunnit in its own right but also a fairly good, totally stagey satire on the detective/mystery genre as it stood in 1967 when "Unnatural Causes" was published.

And okay, I admit. The writer in me loves that stuff. Just like I adore metafiction and this novel opens with a fantastic example of it.

In chapter 1, the murdered man is described, drifting in a dingy, with his hands hacked off. A few chapters later, one of the writers exclaims that she thought that would be a great opening hook for a mystery novel: a handless corpse in a dingy! That would really capture the reader's attention and make them hungry to read on!

See what PD did there? Made a metafictional comment on the writing advice "you've GOT to hook the reader from the first line" while making the reader reflect on if it really did hook theirs.

Gorgeous.

Book 3: in which Adam Dalgliesh gets told off for preferring beautiful, graceful women and then his girlfriend dumps him for his ambivalence :)

Unnatural Causes (Adam Dalgliesh #3), P.D. James (Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park)
Unnatural Causes (1967) is a detective novel by English crime writer P. D. James. While staying with his Aunt Jane in Suffolk, Adam Dalgliesh stumbles across a most bizarre and frightening murder. A local detective novelist, Maurice Seton, becomes himself the subject of investigation when his boat washes ashore with his body inside, with both his hands cut off, seemingly with a meat cleaver. Strangely, the scene of his death is mirrored in a manuscript for the new thriller he was writing...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 2000 میلادی
عنوان: انگیزه‌ های غیرطبیعی؛ نویسنده: پی.دی. جیمز؛ مترجم: خسرو مهربان سمیعی؛ تهران، طرح نو، 1378؛ در 245 ص؛ فروست: کتابهای سیاه؛ شابک: ایکس - 964562567؛ چاپ دوم 1389؛ شابک: 9789645625670؛ موضوع: آدام دالگلیش؛ داستانهای پلیسی از نویسندگان انگلیسی - قرن 20 م
پی.دی. جیمز متولد 1920 میلادی ملکه جدید جنایت، از نویسندگان صاحب سبک جدید رمان های پلیسی محسوب میشود. او پنهانی ترین اندیشه های انسان را بیان میکند، هنر شخصیت پردازی قابل اعتنا با طنزی ظریف، روزنامه ی تایم او را بزرگترین نویسنده ی رمان پلیسی امروز جهان میداند. دالگلایش کارآگاه شاعر مسلک در این رمان نقشی دشوار و پر خطر به عهده دارد. ا. شربیانی