I like reading books that are set in England, and I especially like books that have to do with the English elite. This novel was not as interesting to me as #1 “Cover Her Face’, because the setting and characters were not as appealing. This mystery was set in a psychiatric clinic, and had none of the cache of the English 'Upper Crust' to lend it interest.

There was only one very thin thread which connected this to the first in the series. I would consider that this book could stand on its own.

My Pet Peeve:

Why do authors take 3 main characters and give them such similar sounding names? The characters all kept running together in my mind.

Miss Bolam
Nurse Bolam
Mrs. Bostock

I couldn't finish this. It was very dry and neither the characters nor the plot managed to capture my interest at all. I listened to the audiobook and it kept sending me off to sleep.

I absolutely adore the wit and writing of this author! This series started in the 60’s, but I find that it is able to hold up in the present. It feels a little like reading a Mad Men murder mystery and while reading I can easily visualize the setting and the costumes. I find some of the gender stereotypes and sexist characters highly entertaining. For example, the assumptions made by some of the men that female characters shouldn’t bother seeking more education, or a higher position since they will likely want to be married soon. And all of the drinking sprinkled throughout (and in the office! ) reminds me of visiting my Grandfather’s office as a child that also housed a bar.

I especially enjoy the character of Inspector, Adam Dalgliesh and half expect to see him walking by me on the street, he is that vividly portrayed.

So glad that I made my way to starting this series. It keeps me guessing and serves as an absorbing escape!

DAME AGATHA CHRISTIE AND HER PEERS
BOOK 20
Does James improve over the first in this series, "Cover Her Face"?
CAST – 3 stars: In this second outing for Adam Dalgliesh, his problems with neuralgia become more apparent when he feels “spasms of cold” and a feeling of heaviness on the “right side of his face”. And on the anniversary of his wife’s death he visits a “small Catholic church behind the Strand to light a candle.” There, oddly, he meets Frederica Saxon, a psychologist at the Steen Clinic, where a murder has occurred. Over coffee, Saxon drops names such as Dr. James Baguley and her relationship with him and his wife, Helen. Peter Nagle is a junior Porter at Steen Clinic, is rather lazy as a Porter, and paints nudes of Jennifer Priddy, a junior Typist and she has a very big secret she keeps hidden from Nagle. There is the very stern, no nonsense Administration Officer (A.O), Miss Bolam. There are patients such as Tippett, diagnosed with chronic Schizophrenia. Dr. Paul Steiner, a consulting doctor at the clinic, is treating Mr. Burge, who has had problems with 3 wives. Nurse Bolam is a cousin of the A.O. Cully is a doorman who may or may not see everyone coming in or out. A Mrs. Bostock is in a hurry to replace Miss Bolam as the A.O. There is even a cat, Tiger, living in the basement. The cast is solid, but a bit overloaded (25+) and no standout characters. Dagliesh is still at an introductory level.
PLOT/CRIME – 3: Early in the story, Miss Bolam (in the basement records room of Steen Clinic) is hit on the head with a heavy piece of sculpture by Tippett, then stabbed with a chisel owned by Nagle. But everyone in the clinic knows the location of the art work as well as the chisel. Dalgliesh is on the scene quickly, shuts down all entrances and exits, and feels confident the murder is an inside job. There are numerous suspects and motives. But the crime is relatively ordinary.
PLACE/ATMOSPHERE – 3: Steen Clinic uses Electro-Convulsive therapy (E.C.T.) for some patients. For others, LSD is used. And for a few, there is the classic divan with a pillow. There are screams of pain. There are patients walking the hallways. There are employees exhibiting very odd physical characteristics. There had been a suicide in the basement 8 years previous to the current murder. And a recent break-in. James does a very good job at creating an overall sense of unease during the opening of this story.. It’s hard to believe that as late as 1963, LSD and electric shock therapy were tools used to help those with mental problems. Could a patient tripping on LSD have murdered someone? Or was that previous suicide only a suicide. The crime happens on a Friday evening and it appears a visitor from the past is expected Monday morning. Is that person to reveal a carefully hidden secret? I also especially liked the descriptions of the homes of some of the characters. For example, on character chose to live in a flat which is actually a basement that is moist during rains but it is close to work at the clinic. Another character is living way above their means but with massive, old furniture far too large (and too expensive) for modern housing. Why? One character decorates her television antennae as 2 flower stems with a tea cozy covering the telephone: I feel the same way sometimes and set my cell phone in another room and turn the sound off. I get that totally: my space is mine. 5 stars to beautifully done atmosphere during the opening 1/3rd or so of the novel. But 2 stars during a messy 2nd third, and 3 stars for a final 3rd. 3 stars overall for this element.
INVESTIGATION – 2: Dagliesh questions everyone in the clinic, establishing time frames carefully. Page after page, suspects mention movements to the nearest minutes. I tried to keep track of timelines, who was where, who had an alibi and who didn’t, etc. I wound up with 8 pages of notes before the midway point then realized it was time to stop: things were so messy. James just throws out too much information too fast. But is that on purpose? Do we as readers, as well as Dagliesh, need to step back and look at the big picture? Yes, we do. But, still, there are cracks in the time-lines. It’s no surprise Dalgiesh’s neuralgia is acting up. But Dalgliesh needs to ask a few questions that were apparent to me, but not to him. That said, James never uses the trope in which the detective DOES ask just the right question, but suddenly there is a knock on the door, for example, and that issue takes precedence. BUT, as the story winds and unwinds, it seems that more and more entrances and exits than one initially thought start appearing simply to add more red herrings. In Allingham's debut, "Crime at Black Dudley" secret passageways appear all over the place for the same reason: it is the books major problem. James doesn't take the issue that far, but James does it at least twice too often, and raises the question of "who has which key and which windows are never locked, etc..."
RESOLUTION – 3: The first hundred pages or so are thick with clues and red herrings. Most of the rest of the book flows smoothly and builds to a resolution that makes sense. Dalgiesh needs very little time to explain it all: the author has done a good job of keeping us puzzled then unraveling the mystery. Like all good murder mysteries should.
SUMMARY: 2.8. Initially, the all-believable atmosphere rules here: the story, the characters, the murder, etc., belong inside the Steen Psychiatric Clinic. The motive for murder could have been stronger, but it is believable. A messy investigation does end sensibly. This is a better book, I think, than the first in the series, ‘Cover Her Face.’ So, YES, James writes a better book than Dagliesh's first outing.

A Mind to Murder by P.D. James is the second in the series featuring policeman Adam Dagliesh. It takes place at a London Clinic where the office manager is murdered. Dagliesh and his sidekick Martin investigate and find that more than murder is occurring at the clinic. Another engaging British mystery that is less blood and gore and more thoughtful investigation.

This is another series where I've probably seen more TV adaptations than read the books but I do love a good English police procedural and this is a fine example. Similar to the classic "house party" murder where one of the guests is murdered and the murderer must still be on the estate, this one is set in a medical clinic with the entire staff under suspicion. There is no blizzard to keep everyone in place and so Dalgliesh must do his investigating in the usual fashion. Careful questioning reveals the hidden secrets and finally, the answer as to who dunnet. Very enjoyable.

This book did not do for me what mysteries usually do. It unsettled me, maybe because of the unpleasant characters. And the questioning of the suspects, my God! I was more exhausted than Dalgliesh at the end of it. Has put me off PD James at least for a while.

Where I got the book: audiobook on Audible. Read by Penelope Dellaporta in a terribly refined voice with a few character accents

I noted with great delight that the action of this book takes place mostly in the Steen clinic, which caters to rich, upper-class patients with socially unacceptable problems such as failing marriages and Undiscussable Things (I suspect one of the Things is homosexuality, which was still a criminal offense in England back in 1963). Cures are effected by such means as electroshock therapy and doses of LSD, causing the patients such distress that they scream, and everyone seems to think that’s quite OK and normal. How antiquated it all sounds, and how happy I am that those days are gone.

The clinic is kept running smoothly by Miss Bolam, whom nobody particularly likes. In the last book, Cover Her Face, James also had a murder victim whom nobody particularly liked, and I do hope she doesn’t overuse this method of ensuring lots of potential suspects. Adam Dalgliesh is the man to work his way through the list of possible murderers, and we learn a little more about him—that’s he’s a moderately successful poet on the side, that he still has a thing for Deborah Risko, a suspect from the first book, and that his wife died. All in the cause of making him a little more three-dimensional, but only, really, a little bit more. As a man he just doesn’t float my boat, which is a shame because it helps to fall for the detective as you read through the series.

The suspects are a bit more convincingly sketched in this time, and the slow unfolding of motives and backstory is reasonably entertaining, but it’s not yet P.D. James at her best. There’s a twist, but I ended up being a bit meh about the whole business of who actually killed Miss Bolam. I found myself psychoanalyzing James instead—hmm, another plot line involving a lower-class girl who’s no better than she should be. Hmmm, more snobbery. Hmmmmmmmmm, a suggestion that the single life can, despite all appearances (and contrary to what women were told in James’s day) be more fulfilling than marriage and motherhood. I’m starting to picture James as having clawed her way upward despite all odds, because there’s nothing more snobbish than the ambitious lower orders.

Is there a biographer in the house? I see that James has written an autobiography, but that no biography has as yet been written. I begin to suspect that it might be worth the telling, and have put the autobiography on my TBR.

Unlike the first book in the series, where I won a giveaway e-book, this one I had to listen to. There are a lot of characters to try to keep track of, including the patients, doctors and staff of the mental clinic, and I found it difficult to keep them all straight. I do enjoy the similar outline that these books seem to have where Dalgliesh conducts a series of interviews with each witness and suspect so we get all of the details and stories all at once. We are also learning a bit more about our detective, that his wife died during childbirth and that he is a published poet. We also learn that he is still interested in Debra from the previous book so there might be a budding romance.
In this installment the head administrator at the mental clinic was killed in the basement records room. The main suspects include her cousin and nurse at the clinic who needs money to help care for her ailing mother. Other suspects are the porter and art teacher, Neagle, and his lover, Jenny. It is revealed pretty early on that Neagle and Jenny are up to something, but does it include murder? Dalgliesh figures out that one of the former patients was begin blackmailed and that they had called the administrator just before her death to put an end to it and she was just the type of woman who would get to the bottom of it. Was that the motive for murder? Dalgliesh thought so and went to arrest Neagle for both the murder and the blackmail once he figured out that he was behind the scheme and that he convinced Jenny to be his accomplice in the blackmailing. But while Neagle was guilty of the blackmailing, he was innocent of the murder. That was done by the nurse, the administrator's cousin, who killed her for the inheritance money. Not as good as the first book but still enjoyable.

Another great one - it's amazing how well she conveys the perspective and mental state of each character without disrupting the pleasures of the traditional whodunnit structure.

Enjoyed this mystery very much. Looking forward to continuing the series!

This was written in 1963 and is so dated now that it added to the interest factor for me, like the explanation of their data entry process. Still don't have much of a handle on Adam Dagleish, but I'm sure these books get more complicated as they go along. I wasn't actually thrilled with the setting of this story, a psychiatric clinic, but the writing kept me going with it.