I usually like PD James but I just could not get into this one. Too many characters whose relationships were not made clear, and none of whom were memorable enough that I could remember who was who. I powered through, and honestly, even the last 20 pages were a bit torturous. I'll come right out and say it- I didn't really care what happened, and just sort of skimmed it just to be able to feel like I had finished the book.

I picked up this book hoping to find another murder-mystery author I could enjoy as much as I do Christie.
This book takes place in a nursing home for the invalid. Where people are killed off one after the other is what seem like accidents. Inspector Dalgliesh slowly tries to pu pieces together and get to the bottom of the killings.
The plot is tedious. The narrative creaks and groans and whimpers and almost left me in a stupor.
And having reached the end of the book I'm surprised I made it till the last page.

I was thinking of trying another of her books - a more popular one - and then I read this article : where she thinks of Christie as "such a bad writer" : "http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian..."
I don't think I'd enjoy P.D. James - her sensibilities about what makes a good murder-mystery are obviously starkly different from mine.

I didn't finish this - what a BORING book! I have enjoyed others in the series but it totally sucked!

I thought this was a pretty good story but as a mystery I found it too hard to follow. There were just too many characters and most of them weren't unique enough or important enough to stand out - but you can't tell who's actually going to end up being important because anyone could be a suspect. In fact, one of the killers ended up being someone whose role I can't remember. I think he was an employee, but I have no idea what he did. It makes it a bit difficult to get invested in trying to figure it out because you'd need to make notes. Or at least I would.

The last chapter was also not to my taste, ending with a fight scene rather than gathering everyone in the accusing parlour. It kind of makes the detectiving seem a bit irrelevant when the criminal ends up trying to kill the detective, since that alone is going to be enough to prove they did it. The pieces of the puzzle did seem to hold together pretty well though, even if the complexity made it hard to be sure and the ending rendered it somewhat irrelevant.

I might come back to this series once I finish the Miss Marple books. Or I might not.

I honestly didn't know where this one was going.
Dalgliesh's apathy and lethargy were contagious.
Then came the "lightbulb" moment.
Ooooooh P.D. James you are a twisty one!

the book was not good at all I did not like this book.

I think you need to be an Adam Dalgleish fan to really enjoy this one. Luckily I am !

The book starts off really slowly with Dalgleish leaving hospital after a serious battle with a possibly life threatening illness. He goes to convalesce with an old friend from his past only to find he has died. Dalgliesh suspects murder especially as a series of local deaths then occur. He cannot help but investigate, yet he is not at the top of his game, and event after event piles up before he realises what is going on and finds himself in a very unfortunate situation.

The story does move slowly but I think this emphasises the fact that Dalgleish himself is moving slowly as he works his way back to fitness. He is actually debating whether to leave the police force altogether so he has much on his mind. The mystery is intricate and detailed with a huge range of possible suspects.I enjoyed it very much and was able to guess the who but without understanding the why. Fortunate Dalgleish sparked back to life at the end and sorted it all out for me.

I am glad to report that Adam Dalgleish does not leave the police force - this is only #5 in the series after all. There are a lot of books to go yet which I am very happy about!

Klasikinis britiškas detektyvas, vietomis kiek užtemptas, dėl to skaitėsi lėčiau, 4

What a disappointing read! :( I "knew" about the culprit quite early onwards and from then on it was mainly figuring out the "why". The motif eventually offered could only trigger a "really?!" and the final pages were almost a pain to finish as it felt pretty far fetched. I've read better from PD James.

In an age of television detection in which crimes are often investigated using the most sophisticated technological and psychological tools, and solved by painstaking analysis of the tiniest minutiae of evidence, it comes as something of a surprise that the most striking death in this novel is one that is never officially classified as a crime. But whereas The Black Tower has most of the hallmarks of a conventional murder mystery - including a group of interconnected characters in a remote, enclosed, and slightly unusual location (probably best not to read this book too close to a later Dalgleish novel with a similar setting, The Lighthouse) - the mystery itself is not really that interesting, and its solution seems to leap, if not completely out of nowhere, then at least out of a rather different book. This might be a fatal problem if it were not for P.D. James's writing, and her detective protagonist: both are brilliant in their own way, but subtle, cool, and thoughtful to the point of introspection. The book certainly exerts its own kind of grip; but few thrills.

One of the things I love about James is her attention to place, and the importance she affords it. Also, place is not the subject of tediously long-winded descriptions (as in Hardy's prose) or the overwrought romanticism of the pathetic fallacy (as in the Brontes). But it is still much more than mere setting.

Writing is excellent. It's quite long and there are a lot of people to keep track of. I probably should have read it to keep names straight but the audio was very well done. It definitely meets my criteria for literature above mere entertainment. Probably a 4.5. Only the length prevents me from giving it a five plus the rather depressing mood of the novel. But then it is not quite as depressing as The Shadow of the Wind by Ruiz Zafon, which I am reading at the same time but needed to take more breaks from. PD James kept me wanting to find out who was the murderer, so I listened to it all night.