The saturation of ableism and homophobia made me vomit in my mouth a little, and it wasn't even that interesting or original a reveal, just a compounding of the ableism up to that point. Bitter Cripple and Dead Gay tropes, with the unwelcome bonus of Disabled Killer Hating Everyone Normal.

Dame Agatha Christie and Her Peers
Book #48
If you're looking for blatant homophobic books with stupendously sick violence, this one's for you! And there must be a huge fan base for this loathsome type of novel: the goodreads overall rating is 3.94! AMAZING! (Not really, given the announcement of the goodreads choice awards, always embarrassing!)
CAST - 2: The singular, interesting, likable person here is Aunt Jane, Adam Dagliesh's only living relative. And her meat chopper is missing: she has no alibi! There are a bunch of authors/critics in this one small town: I was hoping for an "And Then There Were None" construct. Jane doesn't spout a single homophobic term, but everyone else is really into "pansy" and "queer" and "queen" (all in one paragraph at one point, James really packs herself into these hateful characters!). Then more pansies and men in mauve dressing gowns. Some readers might find this ancient, silly type of characterization unreadable. And given this was written in 1967, there is NO excuse for James, other than she really can't stand gay folks. But I liked Aunt Jane.
ATMOSPHERE - 2: Incessant talk about the sea encroaching upon land and pulling houses down. One character, handicapped, has the house nearest the ocean, so you know she's a goner early on. (After a couple of pansies, that is.) Yes, Mother Nature always wins, James gets that right.
CRIME - 1: Absolutely repulsive and unnecessarily sick and twisted. You'll know what I mean by page 3. If you like this kind of violence, go for Jo Nesbo perhaps or Elizabeth George. (But, oh, they are so much better authors.)
INVESTIGATION - 1:Adam is just a jerk. At one point, he's rather proud of himself that he is "ready to try Mahler." OH! Aren't we just intellectual geniuses to LISTEN to a Mahler symphony! And Adam really likes to talk about the gal's curves! And their physical handicaps! One 'witty' gay character actually says: "You must control these impulses, my dear,or the League of Romantic Novelists will hurl* you out of the Club." Oh, and Inspector Reckless actually, honestly says, " He's apparently one of those men who don't mind people thinking queer." I suppose James thinks this is a funny line, so she keeps going. Reckless shortly says, "They're a spiteful lot, queers." And I'm only talking about words used through page 58. Relentless, pointless, dated.
RESOLUTION - 1: Hilariously cliched. Inexplicable. Painfully unfunny.
SUMMARY - 1.4. AND worst of all, James actually has a character say: "Ah, yes! Boredom. The intolerable state for any writer." Now, if there is ONE THING writing isn't, that would be boring. Writing is challenging, frustrating, infuriating, fascinating, enthralling and many other things. But no writer I've ever met has said it was boring. I suppose, if you're a really bad writer churning out homophobic, twisted trash, one might get bored every now and then. This book took me over a week to read. By page 175, I just didn't care, but was almost finished. I also recently read the 1,000 page one-sentence "Ducks, Newburyport" in six days. (Gave that one 1-star also, but it reads faster than "Unnatural Causes.") Because this James book is so outdated and silly, it really is time to remove it from publication.
*Yep, lots of hurling, but for all the wrong reasons.

Very hard for me to get thru and it appears I am not the only one. Not sure if I will continue this series
THIS SUMMARY/REVIEW WAS COPIED FROM OTHER SOURCES AND IS USED ONLY AS A REMINDER OF WHAT THE BOOK WAS ABOUT FOR MY PERSONAL INTEREST. ANY PERSONAL NOTATIONS ARE FOR MY RECOLLECTION ONLY
**
The character with a disability in her legs was uniformly referred to as "crippled,"
and surprise, surprise, she turned out to be

the killer. Honestly, if it weren't such a cliche, I'd be disturbed, but it was such an anachronism to see the person with a "non-normal" characteristic be the murderer. The other quaint idea was that she killed the victim because he offered her the guest room instead of his own bed when she galloped over there to comfort him on the suicide of his wife. A little Freud-heavy for my taste.


**
This book could be called "Unnecessarily Complicated Causes." It also suffered from a fair amount of boring descriptive passages about scenery and houses, and characters who were too similar and ill-defined to keep track of. It ended with a too-convenient confession on tape, found after the murderer too-conveniently died. Also, the murderer's death comes at the end of a superficially dramatic adventure scene, involving an attempted rescue from a flooding house during a storm, which was irrelevant and uninteresting. Also irrelevant and uninteresting were all the sections of the book treating the Inspector's ambivalence about his long-distance girlfriend who does not appear in the book herself.
**Published in 1967, this is the third Adam Dalgliesh mystery; following on from “Cover Her Face” and “A Mind to Murder.” Dalgliesh is still involved with Deborah Riscoe, who appeared in the first novel, and is considering whether or not to propose to her. Does he love her enough to change his life and perhaps put his work second? While considering this change, he goes to stay with his aunt, Jane Dalgliesh. An avid bird watcher, she lives in a small community near Monksmere bird reserve, which seems to be populated (apart from her) mostly by writers – either authors or critics. These include Maurice Seton, a detective novelist, Sylvia Kedge, his crippled secretary, his half brother Digby Seton, critic Oliver Latham, Justin Bryce, R.B. Sinclair, the reclusive ‘great novelist’ and romance writer Celia Calthrop and her niece, Elizabeth.

The book unfolds with the discovery of Maurice Seton; found floating in a small dingy, minus his hands. This macabre death throws the small group of writers into recriminations, suspicion and fear. Although the wonderfully named D I Inspector Reckless is in charge, Dalgliesh finds himself dragged into the investigation. This will take him from the idyllic countryside of Monksmere to Soho nightclubs, as he attempts to discover who was responsible for Seton’s disappearance and bizarre death.

***
In this mystery, James avoids a typical "reveal" where Dalgliesh sits everyone down and lets them and the reader know how and why the crime occurred. Instead, she has him discover the how about 75 pages from the end, but though he tells the detective in charge of the investigation (Dalgliesh himself is on vacation visiting his aunt and not officially involved with the case) and helps to solve the murder, James keeps this revelation from the reader, which feels to me like a cheat. Dalgliesh is observing something, the knowledge comes to him, we never knew how, and that is that. End of story. Now, we do get the why and how at the very end, but never Dalgliesh's epiphany and we're left to feel how he has "outgrown the satisfaction of being proved right. He had known who for a long time now and since Monday night he had known how. But to the suspects the day would bring a gratifying vindication and they could be expected to make the most of it."

I very much enjoyed the quality of the prose but found it difficult to sympathize with any of the characters. Even Dalgliesh and his Aunt–both of whom seem to have more dimension that the other flat, insipid, self absorbed residents of Monksmere Head–were provided with so little context and backstory that I felt very little connection. Aunt Jane seemed to be someone I would like to know better, but James never provides the reader with the chance in this book. And the revelation of the murderer at the conclusion seemed contrived–how convenient that the confession tape was in that bag Dalgliesh grabbed–and gratuitously ugly. And even the best language cannot redeem that sort of letdown at the end of a novel, especially a mystery. I'm not writing James off, but I'm certianly not racing out to get another Adam Dalgliesh novel–he's no Peter Wimsey.

Adam Dalgleish is having a short break with his aunt in Suffolk, looking forward to going for walks on the beach and relaxing by the fire. The only downside is the presence in the village of a number of pompous literary 'types', and one of them goes missing Dalgleish is drawn into a bizarre murder investigation which wrecks his hopes of a peaceful holiday.

This is the third book in the Adam Dalgleish series and I enjoyed it less than the previous two. It was initially engaging but I soon found the bickering and petty sniping of the various authors and literary critics tiresome and the characters had little to distinguish them from each other. The plot was over complicated and barely convincing, and it is difficult to warm to Dalgleish who is all too conscious of his superior intellect, without ever sharing his insight with the reader.

I did enjoy the Suffolk setting and James brilliantly describes a terrifying storm that provides a dramatic backdrop to her denouement. Overall, though, this wasn't a memorable book and I'm hoping the next one in the series will be more compelling.

After three Dalgliesh books I'm having trouble warming to the series. I'll read the fourth installment to see if I like it any better, otherwise, I'm out. I can generally knock out a good book in two or three days if I'm really enjoying it but these have taken me weeks to read. I was tempted to give it two stars because of the ridiculousness of the ending. The killer, in grave peril from rising water, has a small sack of belongings that they are saving from the flood, into which they have placed a tape recorded confession. And not just a simple "I did it!" but a long, rambling confession with asides and digressions. And supposedly this was taped just for the killer's own use, having been recorded and re-recorded almost for personal pleasure, not really as a confession for the police. Luckily, Dalgliesh grabs this before it can be lost to the water, affording we the readers the long, detailed how and why for all the mayhem. Maybe the Connecticut police will be lucky and find a tape recording of Aaron Hernandez confessing to everything, carried in his wallet. That's what all killers do, right?

I talked myself into two stars.

Book 60

Unnatural Causes
P. D. James
1967

3/5

I generally like P. D. James but this is overwritten, too dense, you miss both the trees and the damn forest. Also, in the end, it's all some way beyond far-fetched. On the better side the characters are mostly great, P. D. James does brutal well, there's emotional resonance, and, unexpectedly, an awesome action sequence.

Unnatural Causes by P.D. James is the 3rd book in the Adam Dalgliesh mystery series. I've read a couple of others our of sequence but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the books. This book, like the others I've read, was so smartly and well - written. It wasn't favorite though.

Dalgliesh is taking a vacation. Once or twice a year he goes to visit his aunt, his only relative, on the Suffolk coast; partly just to decompress from a case he was working on and also, in this case, to sort out his feelings for his girlfriend. Does he or does he not want to marry the lady. Unfortunately, this visit will be interrupted by a dead body.

His aunt, Jane Dalgliesh, lives in an isolated community of writers and artistes. They tend to go their for peace and quiet. But, as I mentioned, this weekend will be disrupted by a body and also by a torrential storm. The body is discovered in a boat which floated to shore. Oddly, the man has had his hands cut off. It turns out the body is one Maurice Seton, a famed mystery writer who lives right next to Dalgliesh's aunt. We see the 'culprit' placing the body in boat at the very beginning so it's not a surprise to we readers. But there are some surprising things that seem to take place that present various suspects. What did the man and woman bury on the shore? Why was Latham suspiciously watching Dalgliesh?

To be fair, this is not Dalgliesh's case. It's that of the local cop, one Inspector Reckless. Dalgliesh is somewhat frustrated that he's not asked to take over but also sort of angry that he's subordinated to the investigation. It seems the corpse may have died of natural causes (surprising, since the title is Unnatural Causes eh?) but why were the hands removed? Where did he die?

It's an interesting story, filled with a cast of suspicious, nosey characters. PD James can spin a yarn. It moves sort of slowly and methodically until Dalgliesh visits London and the storm erupts on the coast. Lots of action then.... But in my mind, the story winds down sort of anti climactically, sort of satisfying but also kind of shoulder shrugging. Maybe because we don't have the benefit of Dalgliesh's team involvement. At any rate, it's still entertaining and it's always good to visit P.D. James' world. (3.5 stars)

No matter what, there is something always disgusted about Dalgliesh. This book has him traveling through countryside he admires and staying with a relative he loves (mainly because she leaves him alone). There are even a few other people in the book that Dalgliesh doesn't seem to have an aversion to (and that we too are even allowed to like). But most things and people, and mysteries, and solving mysteries, just give Dalgliesh a pain. Life's a bitch, Adam.

Accepting that, this is a good mystery, with an excellent, dramatic reveal of the murderer (though with a labored mopping-up at the end). James is (as always) clear and readable, if starved for sunlight.

I think this is the best P. D. James I've read so far. The story is a ripper. It has a surprising metafictional quality to it due to the fact that most of the characters are writers and the victim is a mystery writer. This gives the reader some rather enjoyable moments of irony and self-referential playfulness. James's writing is, as always, absolutely great--intelligent without overshadowing the story or bringing too much attention to itself. The first few pages in particular are deliciously entertaining. I'm noticing a tendency for her to set her stories near the water in small, closeknit communities. She does this in Unnatural Causes, The Black Tower, Death in Holy Orders, and The Lighthouse at the very least, though there may be others among her books I haven't read. Obviously such a setting fits sensibly with the British murder mystery genre, but it is also naturally evocative and interesting. It must be a conscious choice on her part as I don't imagine much in her writing to be accidental. So far, I don't think this is a handicap, though it could obviously be one. I'm just not sick of it yet.

3.5 stars

Not bad but I enjoyed the setting much more than the mystery. I want to be a part of the Cadaver Club!

Another fine Golden Age mystery, set among the desolation and drama of the Suffolk coast. James writes place very, very well, and therein lies the big problem I had with this book: the Suffolk bits are mesmerizing, and the sojourn to London, replete with nightclubs, gangsters and gentlemen's clubs, was not. It felt so intrusive, and yanked me clean out of what's an otherwise very enjoyable tale of rural coastal neighbors way too up in each other's business.

Plus James gives us this:

Mrs. Bain-Porter had the deep, rich, upper-class female voice which is trained to intimidate the helots of empire or to carry across any hockey field in the teeth of a high gale.

and this:

She was knitting a pair of woollen socks in bright red which Dalgliesh could only hope were not intended for him.

(#cronegoals)

As well as a number of other incredibly satisfying descriptive passages focusing on architecture and weather. Granted these are two of my favorite things to read about, but I think their quality transcends my interests. The jagged London subplot, however, does not.

(Also animal harm tw: before the plot begins, things end badly for a beloved cat, and this is brought up in way too much detail at least three times, so be advised of that going in.)