A just-retired, blue-blooded government minister and a tramp have their throats cut in a church in James's well plotted, nicely paced mystery. I'm a big fan of James, and of her lovely Dalgliesh in particular. She allows Dalgliesh and his subordinate, Constable Kate Miskin, to be thoughtful, well-rounded characters, deserving of our admiration. Nearly everyone else in the book (along with nearly everyone else in every P.D. James book) comes in for very harsh treatment. James is a deeply misanthropic writer. (I'm not a fan of the misanthropy.) The upper classes are chilly and condescending; the lower classes, especially the women, are sour, or bitter, or have given up on happiness. The proles, and the elderly, are always cruelly sketched:She was, he guessed, in her late thirties, and was uncompromisingly plain in a way it struck him few women nowadays were. A small sharp nose was imbedded between pudgy cheeks on which the threads of broken veins were emphasized rather than disguised by a thin crust of make-up. She had a primly censorious mouth above a slightly receding chin already showing the first slackness of a dewlap. Her hair, which looked as if it had been inexpertly permed, was pulled back at the sides but frizzed over the high forehead rather in the poodle-like fashion of an Edwardian. (Evelyn Matlock, p. 93)Her skin was cleft with deep lines running from the jaw to the high jutting cheekbones. It was as if two palms had been placed against the frail skin and forced it upwards, so that he saw with a shock of premonitory recognition the shine of the skull beneath the skin. The scrolls of the ears flat against the sides of the skull were so large that they looked like abnormal excrescences. (Ursula Berowne, p. 96)The flesh seemed to have slipped from the bones so that the beaked nose cleft the skin sharp as a knife edge while the jowls hung in slack, mottled pouches like the flesh of a plucked fowl. The flaming Massingham hair was bleached and faded now to the colour and texture of straw. He thought: He looks as archaic as a Rowlandson drawing. Old age makes caricatures of us all. No wonder we dread it. (Lord Dungannon, p. 168)A mouth is never merely a mouth, but "a moist focus of emotion." A character she doesn't like just can't win. "His tone was almost studiously polite, but neither sardonic nor provocatively obsequious." Really? You're going to hold that against him?In the weirdest, most misogynistic category, this would probably be the winner: She had the drained look which Sarah had seen on the face of a friend who had recently given birth, bright-eyed, but bloated and somehow diminished, as if virtue had gone out of her. (Evelyn Matlock, p. 393)
P.D. James is considered as a worthy successor to Agatha Christie and is widely regarded as one of the most celebrated crime novelists of our generation. But, in spite of all that I have never enjoyed reading her books. I mostly found them boring and bland.Now, the book. The edition I was reading was a TV tie-up, with faces of two actors who played character parts in the dramatization of the novel and it was 552 pages long.Paul Berowne who is an MP and a former cabinet minister is found dead in a church, with his throat slit with his own razor, along with fellow victim, Harry Mack, a homeless tramp. This incident brings Commander Adam Dalgleish, poet and detective into the scenario to find out who was responsible for the dirty deed. He, with his team sets about his task and in the process involves Berowne’s mother, his wife and her lover, daughter, his mistress and others. The plot and the motive was very simple. It all came down to money and jealousy. So, my problem with this book was that 552 pages were too much for this book. According to me the whole matter could and should have been condensed to a maximum of 350 pages.I like my mystery novels with a liberal dose of clues and twists. I do like the psychological part, but an abundance of it turns the whole novel boring. In this case, there was serious lack of clues and twists, with an abundance of psychology. Every character was thinking, even the police was thinking, and amidst all these thought process, I could hardly find any useful bit related to the murder or the investigation. And there were conversations, long long boring conversations. The whole thing seemed that everyone was chatting, instead of providing clues or pointing out suspects they were all busy chatting!!!The ending when it came, almost seemed a blessing!!! Literally it dropped out of the sky. All those pages, full of room descriptions and insightful chats and detailed characterisations etc etc were just there to fill up the pages. I felt cheated. 552 pages and I get this???? And, there was my nemesis to deal with, super long paragraphs!!!!
Do You like book A Taste For Death (2005)?
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.
—Chris
I find it sort of fortuitous to be rereading PD James preceding her recent death. And last night, as I finished 'A Taste for Death' I had tears in my eyes feeling the loss of this great master of the crime novel. There ARE annoying things about her writing in ATFD, published in 1986. Her tag lines often read 'He said:' or 'She said:' followed by a new paragraph... But this is minor. Throughout her prose is mostly amazing and sometimes quite moving, her insights into human nature do not age or date her work. The ending of ADFD is a stunner. I sat for a few minutes contemplating the guts it took to write those words - and the perfect balance of her point-of-view about life and death, which she brings to her crime fiction.So I will continue rereading PD James, for her old fashioned literary sensibilities and brilliance. Her mind ... formidable!
—Elan Durham
I do pick up new James novels from time to time, but always with the same misgivings. It's a bit like not giving up on visiting your alcoholic brother, though you know he's most likely going to start sober and be drunk and unreliable by the time the visit draws to a close.I do like P.D. James quite a bit, but I love Agatha Christie. P.D. James is a much better writer; Christie is a much better plotter. With James's mysteries, even the best ones, you never know, and can never trust, where the plot is going: there might always be a new element added right before the end that completely twists the path of the story. With Christie's best mysteries, clues are faithfully laid at the reader's feet, cumulatively and with little trickery. *** minor spoilers ahead *** A Taste for Death is a great example: it's well written, captivating, then a new witness steps in close to the end. New lines of inquiry open up all the time. So there is no element of suspense - and you kind of want that in a mystery novel, right?
—Ilinca
