El llibre està ben escrit. L'autora, amb unes grans dots d'observació, sap crear una atmòsfera de misteri que, a poc a poc, ens va embolcallant i inquietant. Tant el narrador, omnipresent, com el personatge principal, observen tots els detalls que els envolten, fent servir una gran riquesa de vocabulari i varietat de recursos, entre ells les enumeracions i comparacions.
De tota manera, és un llibre que no és llegeix fàcilment, ja que l'autora construeix les frases amb poca simplicitat, cosa que t'obliga, sovint, a rellegir el paràgraf per copsar bé el sentit i entendre què ha volgut dir. Això fa que no m'hagi entusiasmat.

My first P.D. James mystery, and probably my last. Scotland Yard detective Adam Dalgliesh is summoned to visit an elderly priest he knew in his youth, but when he arrives he learns the priest has died of a heart attack. For some reason, Dalgliesh suspects foul play from the start, and when patients in the nearby convalescent hospital start dropping dead from seemingly innocent causes, he looks deeper.

I didn't find this story particularly interesting in the telling, but I was still interested until the end. Unfortunately, that ending is awful. First of all, the killer reveals themself to Dalgliesh for no good reason at all, when they could remain silent and get away with the crime. Then Dalgliesh escapes a certain death through an utterly absurd series of events. Just head shaking stuff. I like reading mysteries, and will read half a dozen a year for fun. This is the worst of the lot that I've read in years. Dalgliesh is apparently a recurring character in James' books, which is also a bad choice, since he's neither charismatic nor interesting in the slightest.

I had such a hard time getting through it. I also thought there were several things that were confusing -- I never figured out what the murderer was doing there in the first place (I'm sure I read about his role somewhere at the beginning of the book and forgot about it). And I never really understood why it the book is called "The Black Tower" -- it seems to me like the tower didn't have that much to do with the story. I just thought it was really boring.

Meh. Not a great mystery/detective story. You, and the detective, spend the entire novel in the dark, until everything is solved in one brilliant and unsatisfying flash at the end.

The book opens with Dalgliesh in the hospital, learning that he isn't going to die. But he has had mononucleosis and needs to convalesce. From the beginning, and throughout the novel, Dalgliesh wonders whether he really wants to continue as a policeman. Since there are 9 more installments in the series, it's not a mental leap to know his decision. But while in the hospital he had a letter from his father's curate of 30 years ago asking to see him, professionally, and so Dalgliesh takes himself to the Dorset coast.

I think I prefer the detectives to stay on the job and not operate off duty. This is the second in the series where Dalgliesh has been on scene unofficially. Further, it takes a very long time in this one for us to know with certainty whether previous deaths are murders or from natural causes, as was assumed at the time. As this is a murder/crime novel, it's easy for the reader to jump to conclusions, but I sort of like things a bit more obvious. There is enough guess and conjecture in these things anyway.

In this, there are a *lot* of named characters. The setting is a home for the disabled - all wheelchair bound. Although that population is small, each is named and with a backstory. There is also the small staff. For nearly the first half of the book I had a hard time remembering which were able-bodied and which were not. As we are purportedly talking about a murderer, knowing which was which was pertinent.

This is my least favorite of the series so far. If I weren't reading with a group, and planning to read one a month for the rest of the year, I might throw my hands up and move on. But I like the prose, and despite complaining about too many characters, James does a better job of characterization than I find usual for the genre. I will persevere, but this was a not-very-good 3-stars.

I think that some of P.D. James' best books take place at remote locations or on islands. While this book is on the mainland, it's in a hospital for handicapped adults on the coast high on a cliff by the sea in Dorset, very similar to the island location in The Lighthouse. Dalgleish goes to the clinic to visit his father's old curate, but finds that the man has died before he arrives. There are mysterious staff members who wear hooded robes and some of the patients clearly dislike some of the staff and the other patients, so lots of potential murders. The ending is a surprise.

B+: I'm a bit tired of the depiction of disabled people in James' books, and her endings always feel quite forced, but I can't deny that she creates a wonderful setting and collection of characters for this puzzle. She has clearly modelled this on "The Nine Tailors" but has neither the level of prose or polish to achieve something quite matching her ambition. Still, utterly transporting, and the motive for the murder is always dangling there but not quite visible. Clever.

Again, like her others, I love the characters & exposition of the majority of the book, but mystified by some of the twists with the final reveal. Always feel like she pulls in a new element from out of thin air, unconnected to & not even hinted at in the rest of the book.

Hoo boy.

This book is the definition of the word slow. It is a convalescence book about a character to whom I had little to no connection. I wonder if I would have felt differently if I had read any other books starring Adam Dalgliesh, but I didn't and I found the references to the case he was recovering from kind of irritating. Like an in-joke to which I wasn't privy.

I loved the sense of the solitude and reduced speed of Dorset, but it took too long to get to the action and I had very little attachment to the story. I also found the characters generally confusing and not terribly well fleshed out.

The last 80 or so pages picked up, but it took me a long time to get through this mere 350 page novel. I'd not recommend it, unless you like lurid descriptions of flowers and stories viewed through a mist.

I'm inclined to try another of her books as I feel I may have just picked up the wrong one for starters and I'd give it a star and a half. The writing isn't bad, but when I feel like I'm slogging through a book I'm reading for pleasure, there is something amiss.

Beh.

Convalescent after a hospital stay, Dalgleish receives an invitation/plea for help from an old friend, only to find on arrival that he has died. A slightly unusual one for Dalgleish but baffling nevertheless. P D James on her usual form.

Maybe ★★★ 12.

Adam Dalgliesh learns a little something about false diagnoses. Then he goes to visit a friend who apparently died just before he arrives. The friend was working as a counselor/priest at a nursing home (?) for quadriplegics at a converted estate. But the bodies keep falling and they all appear to be natural causes. There were too many for natural causes to have killed them all.

All this while Adam is considering leaving the Met.

This was okay but as I was listening to this today, I kind of think I dozed off for a couple of chapters because when I woke up he was solving it. And facing other problems.

I've been working my way through the Adam Dalgliesh stories and with James' recent passing, I will continue.

Étrange intrigue, car on n'est pas au courant qu'il y a eu meurtre avant la fin. L'inspecteur suit tout au long un fil qu'il n'est pas certain de voir, dans une énigme sur laquelle il ne veut pas enquêter. J'ai eu l'impression de lire un Barbara Pym beaucoup trop long.