Back when my cable company had the wonderful Ovation channel, I watched an hour long show from the 70s about Agatha Christie. Not because I like Christie; I don't but because as an English major, I felt obliged to watch it (does anyone else feel this way?). One of the people interviewed on the show was P.D. James. Her comments about Christie vocalized why I didn't like Christie (I couldn't quite explain why I didn't like her). Because of this, I picked up A Taste for Death at a used book sale.

A Taste for Death isn't James' best book. I think The Murder Room, for instance, is far better. It is still a good book with wonderful characters.

This is a great British mystery, 7 books in one, about a baronet's death and the people involved. Good drama, murder and intrigue. Happy reading!

Tortuously long, morose, but well-written

Not so sure I’ll read another one. This was my first. Towards the end I did a lot of skimming. Nevertheless, I thought it was richly written. Hats off to the narrator. What a lot to read aloud.

I'd like to rate this at a bit less than four stars as I found it somewhat ponderous. While the story is fine, James seems to burden the reader with perhaps too much detail & description. Also, I found the timing to be a bit too slow, especially since the murderer is revealed too far from the story's ending. She spends what I thought was an inordinate amount of time after the solution delving into the messy psyches and relationships of the various characters. Some excitement towards the end, but I found the book, on balance, less satisfying than others in this series.

James at her best--kind of an early/middle Dalgliesh novel with Kate Miskin playing an important role both in the investigation and as a developing character who is no longer in awe of her boss. John Massingham is relegated more the to the background in this one.

They are investigating what is either a double murder or a murder and suicide but the two victims (or one victim and one criminal, now dead) are from different worlds--or seem to be. One is Sir Paul Berowne, recently resigned as a Minister of the Crown, giving up a political career that had him tabbed as the "next Prime Minister but one" while the other is Harry Mack, a local tramp. The scene of the crime is the vestry of a church in London where Berowne was spending the night, apparently praying or thinking about his change in career while Harry often spent the night, although on the porch wrapped against the elements--he didn't like people and he didn't like to be inside.

There quite a few persons of interest although no suspects at first, but a group of friends and family of Sir Paul, none of them terribly likely as a murderer. Dalgliesh and his squad--a newly constituted unit of Scotland Yard handling cases that might embarrass the government or at least prove politically vexing--use the time honored British detective methods of deduction to eliminate almost all of the potential persons of interest while still making use of current forensic science.

James is at her best while describing the interplay of class and, to some extent, gender, among the police, the suspects and those simply affected by the crime.

NOTE: I read the hardcover edition of this book, gotten from the library. The only editions available for selection on goodreads are the audiobooks.

Long, long, long. A quote from the next book I picked up would be good advise for the author and editors or A Taste for Death.

"A good tale moves with a dreamlike speed from event to event, pausing only to say as much as is needed and no more." Introduction to Fairy tales from the brothers Grimm by Philip Pullman

Quotable:
This had been followed by a sense of personal outrage, an emptiness and then a surge of melancholy, not strong enough to be called grief but keener than mere regret, which had surprised him by its intensity.

I don't know what to say here, but this book really dragged toward the end and the treatment of the female police officer was just simply ridiculous. I lived in the UK for several years and PD James is a very popular author, but I can't see it with this book as an example.

It's a perfectly serviceable mystery, but nothing that really stood out for me.

Read it if you can find it.

darkness in the vestry...
It is easy to argue that the best of murder mystery writers in English over the past thirty years is P.D. James. Her wonderful prose, dark vision and immaculately rendered settings immerse the reader in complex tales of loss and redemption. I heard her interviewed on the radio once and was struck at what a comedian she was; it would never have occurred to me based on her books. Sir Paul Berowne is found dead in the vestry of a church. Adam Dalgliesh gets the case, along with two younger officers. The investigation draws the reader deep into the lives of all involved, along with images of a fading England and a particularly troubled woman police officer. This is high quality work and worth the time invested in reading. Best during a long evening in the easy chair with Oolong tea.

PD James has lingered a lot. She delves so much on each scene, it becomes really boring at times. For instance, at the very beginning, she has gone into so much of detail about the dead bodies and their setting that it has actually become extremely morbid.
It is very generous of her to want to share her vision completely, to the last minute detail, but it negatively affects the mind's ability to hold interest in her work. There should have been some leeway given to the reader to imagine some part of the story. She snuffs off that desire by her constant detailing.
Having said this, I can credit her with successfully managing to get a human element in her narrative. She succeeds in involving you in her characters. You can understand her characters and all makes sense eventually.
The mystery wasn't ground breaking. It started vague and slow, but it picks up steam as it progresses. When the end came, it was quite predictable.
This could have been a good read, if it wasn't so long and descriptive. Accepting that the intentions were honourable, the editors should have intervened to make it more crisp, as a mystery need be.

This was my first P.D. James mystery, and it was a fine book. James' detective, Adam Dalgliesh, is apparently a poet (we are told this again and again) but we never see him writing or read any of his verse. Maybe these are present in other Dalgliesh books.

James is a fine writer, but she used one narrative tool in this book of which I'm not a huge fan. The reader doesn't have complete access to the thoughts of each character, but we do have access to some of their longings, musings, and wonderings. It seems these are present just to advance the whodunit aspect of the book. So, we will read about one of the detectives putting some of the pieces of the puzzle together, thinking that the murderer must be X. That's a fine tool to use, but it appears overused here. It got to be a bit much.

This was a fine book, but I'm not sure I'll read more of P.D. James. There are lots of other excellent books in the world to read.

4.5 but it was a bit too long. Excellent characters. Insanely cleaver plot and distractions. Internal dialogues (some went on too long, but a I suppose are necessary to establish characters for future books.) Very visual, one could say stage or screen directions.
Even after all this- I could only fathom that Paul was having a major midlife crisis. But his character was the weakest.

Perhaps classic murder mysteries are just not my genre. I found this book PAINFUL to read. For me it was predictable, boring and totally unsuspenseful. I never came to care about the characters. There were endless paragraphs of physical description, mostly about furniture. Ugh! The emotional breakdowns at the end were beyond unrealistic. I'm not sure how people like this stuff, but obviously they do, so what do I know?