3.5 stars. A good read, but I have enjoyed other books in this series more.

This is possibly one of James's most introspective and well-handled mysteries. Recovering from a severe illness and newly aware of his mortality, Adam Dalgliesh makes the decision to leave the police force. Before returning to tender his resignation, however, he decides to visit an old friend who has written him alluding to a need for advice. Father Michael is the chaplain at Toynton Grange, a home for the "young disabled" in Dorset, and it seems like as good a place as any to convalesce. When Dalgliesh arrives, however, he finds a morass of a mystery.

This mystery shares a lot of characteristics with James's later Death in Holy Orders; both are excellent, but I'd recommend not reading them in quick succession, as I found the similarities somewhat distracting.

Too many characters to keep track of. The soporific effects of this were without parallel.

P.D. James is a reliably good author, in that the plot is complex and her characters are consistently round, not flat. I enjoyed this book. That said, this is not one of my favourite Adam Dalgleish books. There are a few plot points which come up, then simply peter out, forgotten. I also had trouble keeping track of who was who among the various staff members and patients at Toynton Grange.

Cozy English mystery, set on a high cliff above the sea in a country estate now serving as an invalid home.

3.5 stars for the wonderful writing and intricate plotting, but oh my there are so many characters!

The Black Tower was the fifth or sixth of James' Adam Dalgliesh novels I read and it's easily the one I liked the most. I enjoyed Shroud for a Nightingale, which was a nice surprise, since before that I'd been kind of lukewarm on her books. Some of them I liked, but others succumbed to her tendency to clinical detachment. But this is an excellent book and one that demonstrates why she is reputed as one of the great mystery writers.

What really helps the book is that it departs from the usual formula of Dalgliesh arriving on the scene of a murder and then slowly and methodically interviewing the suspects until he finds the killer (with one or more murders interspersed in between). Here he arrives at a nursing home for disabled people (most afflicted with what in the book the characters call DS or "disseminated sclerosis," i.e., what we know as multiple sclerosis) at the behest of an old acquaintance, his father's former curate, who is now the facility's chaplain and spiritual advisor.

Dalgliesh is convalescing in hospital when he receives a letter inviting him to visit Toynton Grange, as it's known, because Father Baddeley wants his advice about something. Due some leave when he gets out he decides to accept, and drives up to the place, which is on the northern coast of England. He visits not least because he's contemplating retiring from Scotland Yard and wants some time to ruminate on the decision. But when he arrives, he discovers that his old friend has died a few days before. Since Father Baddeley left Dalgliesh his books in his will, Dalgliesh is allowed to stay on in Baddeley's home while he sorts them out. Hence he becomes part of the community and comes to know its various members, from the doctors and nurses on the staff to the patients, and the community's head, a man who dedicated his life to running the home after he experienced a miraculous cure of his own "DS" at Lourdes, to which the community makes regular pilgrimages. But someone at Toynton Grange is a murderer, one who will keep killing unless Dalgliesh stops him.

Dalgliesh isn't a cop here, and that's why the novel works so well. He doesn't even tell anyone who he is, though his identity is eventually uncovered. He doesn't even have any official role, even after more deaths occur. Instead, he keeps poking around, spurred on by the nagging doubt in his head about why Father Baddeley died with his surplice on, as though he had just seen someone for confession, though he had no scheduled appointments after his elderly neighbor, who was the last to see him alive. Perhaps it was just an old man dying of old age. But that surplice. Why?

Of course the surplice is a real clue, not a red herring. Father Baddeley was murdered. But who did it? The leader of the community, trying to keep the transfer of the facility to a more well-heeled group on track. The mysteriously wealthy government functionary who rents one of the cottages on the grounds? The chief doctor? His wife? One of the staff? The secret lies in the black tower that looms over the cliffs at the edge of Toynton Grange. But what is the secret.

James writing in the book is superb, brilliantly evocative. She gives all the characters distinct personalities, even the ones who only appear for a few pages. But it's the usually cold, reserved Dalgliesh who really opens up, and I think that helped James open up, too. The writing has a fluidity and grace that was missing in her earlier books. And she has some great turns of phrase. A few examples:

Looking over Father Baddeley's map of Toynton Grange: "The wavy lines presumably represented the sea. Dalgliesh felt the omission of a spouting whale." (15)

On seeing his host, Wilfred Anstey's smile for the first time: "Dalgliesh wondered why it was that philanthroplists so often had a reluctance to visit their dentist." (58)

"Meanwhile Mrs. Hammitt sipped her coffee and talked, encouraged in her volubility and occasional indiscretion by the belief which Dalgliesh had noticed before that a man who is physically working only hears half what is said to him." (169)

The same Mrs. Hammitt asking Dalgliesh to call her by her given name of Millicent: "And I shall try to call you Adam but I don't think it's going to come easily. You aren't a Christian name person." (170)

Has a writer better understood her creation?

"She spoke as if Wilfred, faced with the Jordan River, had neither liked the look of the water nor had confidence in his boat." (176)

And as Dalgliesh watches the pilgrims gather as they prepare to set off: "The party could have been an oddly assorted party of team supporters on their way to a football match, but one, Dalgliesh thought, that hardly expected the home side to win." (306)

I'm not always her biggest fan, but James had a real command of the English language. One that in every book has me reaching for a dictionary, something I usually don't have to do. Here I had to look up "accidie" (11), which means apathy or indifference; and "pudency" (11), which I really shouldn't have had to since it's the shame or modesty someone who is "impudent" lacks.

The TV adaptation with Roy Marsden as Dalgliesh is very well done and has a great cast (Martin Jarvis, Art Malik, Rachel Kempson), though unlike the book none of the patients is crippled. Nowadays you couldn't get away with that. There are a few other changes, but they're modest ones. It's overall quite faithful. But it's no substitute for the book. I haven't read all of James' Dalgliesh books. But if I ever do, any other one will have a tough time dislodging The Black Tower as her best.


Wednesday, 16 August 2023

Dalgliesh is recovering from a serious illness and gets a letter from an old family friend who's working at a home for the disabled? Permanently ill? Not sure exactly what to call the place - it's not a nursing home for the elderly, but it's definitely a care place.

Anyhow, the writing was difficult for me. It was like being ill along with Dalgliesh and not being able to quite grasp things or wondering if I had a fever again or what.

I don't usually care for the list of characters at the beginning of a book. In this one, it would have been helpful, as there were a lot of recurring people and they sometimes called people by their first name, sometimes their last, and I often wasn't sure just who we were discussing. They were never distinct to me. Which one was a nurse, which one an aide? Which of the older men were we discussing? Which of the police? Which of the people who died before the tale began?

It sorted itself out in the end, but I was frustrated throughout and not really certain it was worth the effort to figure it out. If the intent was to make the reader feel as Dalgliesh felt,then it was a rousing success.

After Shroud for a Nightingale I just had to read more of the Dalgliesh series. This was another great installment, somewhat more personal and more focused on the detective. The claustrophobic atmosphere was again very well created and every character just came to life: I found them annoying, hated them and pitied them as the story went along. Really incredible! I can't wait to pick up the next book of this series!

First time pd James reader. It was a bit bleak, very British. Wondering if all her books are like that? Since I work with the terminally and chronically Ill I thought the way she wrote about the residents and their thought processes was insightful.

Excellent climax, and I enjoyed the deeper look into Dalgliesh's character, but the plot was way, way too slow. This is a crime fiction novel -- we all know from the get-go that there's going to be foul play behind most, probably all, the deaths that occur. So it's very frustrating to have to read a couple of hundred pages before Dalgliesh, now a Commander at the Met, allows himself to really acknowledge the same thing.

It's the exact opposite defect to that which wrecked Unnatural Causes, but thanks to the tense, well-written climax which showed a side to Dalgliesh that we hadn't yet seen, I at least finished The Black Tower in a better mood than I did Unnatural Causes.

However, I'm starting to feel a little disillusioned by the AD series as a whole. PD James has an excellent reputation, of course, and I'd gone in expecting that each instalment would be of consistently good quality, much like Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series. That, unfortunately, is not the case. I've already started the sixth novel - Death of an Expert Witness - and it's not looking too promising so far. I can only keep hoping that James's work improves in the latter half of the series, because if the rest of it is this hit and miss it's going to be tough going.

Listened to this about a week ago. As with all of P.D. James' novels, it's quite well written. I enjoyed it. I continue to really like how she writes, particularly her character work. A few notes:

1. I really didn't predict the killer weirdly, because he's not at all suspicious, and seems kind of the most disconnected from everything.

2. There seems to have been a significant time jump between this book and the last one in the series.

3. I really enjoyed how this one deals with Dalgliesh's feelings about his own mortality, and his thoughts about his job, given at the start of the book he's recovering from a very serious illness (and one everyone thought was going to be much worse/fatal).

4. The library only had this on audiobook, and I'm not sure I'd choose to read many mystery novels that way (this is in no way a criticism of the narrator, who was excellent). Mainly because audiobooks (even well done audiobooks) always make me aware of how I read paper books. For example, I read fast because I sort of skim a lot of descriptors, etc. I also think that I semi-skim dramatic physical confrontations. One, they make me anxious, and two, they're the part of the book I'm least interested in, particularly if they're long. I love all the lead-up to them, but I find the confrontations themselves generally uninteresting, unless they're more conversation-based.

Audiobooks don't really allow you to skim. You can speed them up, but you can't selectively skim. So I had to essentially stick through the entire dramatic confrontation, and it felt long. It's interesting in its way, certainly. But I suspect I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd been reading a paper copy. So really, my major quibble had more to do with format. Oh, except that:

5. Umm, I know that the main action was taking place at a sort of assisted living home for the chronically ill, but even so, there were a lot of convenient deaths in a short period of time, all apparently from naturally causes. Seriously, there were four or five. And there are maybe a dozen or so people living in the area. Surely that alone would have been enough for someone to have a second look, and open some sort of investigation? It started to strain credulity by about the third death is all I'm saying.

Overall though, an enjoyable read.