The Black Tower

Counterintuitively, I enjoyed this more as a novel than as 'crime fiction'. In terms of the latter, it's another story, like Unnatural Causes, where Dalgleish is off-duty. It's not even clear what needs investigating till way past the halfway mark. James suddenly seems to wake up and crams a whole lot of crime-y stuff into the final chapter including the Detective's Burst of Intuition, the Cornered Killer Climax, the Jeopardy on a Clifftop, and the Last Minute Rescue!But before we're recalled to the crime tropes, there is much to enjoy in the weird setting (those monks' habits!), and, especially, the characterisation. After the way James trashed a disabled character in Unnatural Causes I was wary, but here she conveys a sense of the horror of a degenerative neurological disease like MS and gives her characters the dignities of rounded personalities. I don't think I'm ever going to warm to chilly, cerebral Dalgleish, but this story has more depth than we might typically see in this style of crime fiction

Too many characters too little developed to care about, but then as much as you do care about them, we never find out a resolution to most of their stories. That might be as in real life, but less satisfying in a novel. Plot seemed rather over the top, even for detective fiction!But this series is plagued with typos (Kindle edition). Both in punctuation in the wrong place and words which look like they've been scanned wrongly with optical recognition software and the punisher hasn't bothered proofreading! Putting me off buying the rest of the series on Kindle - I like having them on my phone but I'm not paying for such poor quality when I can get free from local library.

In this book Adam Dalgliesh spends much of his time in an existential crisis of whether to leave the police form and pursue an unspecified future or not. We accompany him down dark paths as he ponders.Unlikely circumstances place him in a nursing home on the Dorset.The staff and patients are all crushed by massive physical and psychological problems. This leads to an state of unrelieved gloom.Bad things happen and Dalgliesh eventually does something. Then the book finishes.P D James could have easily finished the series with this book and maybe she had strongly considered doing do.By the last chapter I was happy for it to drift away.At present I have not read further in the series but I will continue to do so.

A sinister mystery this, partly location, and partly the feeling that Dalgliesh is not operating at the full capacity of his deductive powers. He has been ill and goes to Dorset to convalesce, to visit an elderly friend. His love and energy for detecting are muted, there are hints he may not continue.On arrival in Dorset he finds his friend, Father Baddeley has died. Dalgliesh is inevitably drawn into the daily life at Toynton Hall, the care home at which the Father was chaplain. All is not as it seems. Baddeley’s was not the first death. But Dalgliesh looks at clues and is unusually reticent, unmotivated, tired.This is an intricate story set in a strange community with overtones of religious fervour, financial difficulties, disabilities not clearly explained, relationships tangled, past stories and resentments lurking beneath the surface.I am re-reading PD James in order and with this, the fifth in the series, she seems to be getting into the rhythm which those familiar with the last of the Dalgliesh books will recognise. Dalgliesh is oddly denuded in this book, giving us an insight into his character we have not have seen before, we see beneath the professional face: he has been ill, is tired, less patient, and the mask of his profession sometimes slips. Fascinating, a hint of the detective into which he will evolve in the later books.

Commander Dalgliesh is in hospital for investigations when he receives a letter from his fathers old curate. It is thirty years since he has seen Father Baddeley and so he decides to use his convalescent leave to visit him. On his arrival he discovers that Father Baddeley passed away eleven days ago. He tries to investigate his death and other staring happenings but his illness and general weakness is holding him back.