Unnatural Causes (1967)

1986 Faber blurb:

In the dingy vestry of St. Matthew’s, Paddington, two bodies lie in a welter of blood, their gaping throats cut with brutal precision.  One is a local tramp, the other an ex-Minister of State.

Adam Dalgliesh finds himself faced with the most confused and convoluted case of his career.  Why was Sir Paul Berowne sleeping in the vestry shortly before his death?  What exactly happened when a girl was drowned at a Thames bathing party?  What connects an elderly spinster whose life revolves round St. Matthew’s, the pathetic waif she befriends, Berowne’s embittered brother-in-law, and his estranged daughter Sarah, already deeply involved in revolutionary politics?  Was there any link between the deaths of three women already close to Berowne?

In reaching the answer Dalgliesh follows a trail from a Soane mansion in Kensington to the sourest stretches of a London canal, from the expense-account luxury of the Black Swan to a siege off Holland Park Avenue.  And finally, after some heart-stopping hours, to the great empty church were it all started.

A Taste for Death is P.D. James’s finest achievement yet.

My review:

Although very long (450 pages) and grim in parts, this is superb, possibly James’s best work.  The murders of a Minister of the Crown and a tramp in the vestry of a church afford James ample opportunity to write both a gripping detective story, with some good, logical detection on the part of Adam Dalgliesh resulting in the arrest of one of the most hateful murderers in fiction after an agonisingly tense scene in Miskin’s flat; and a finely-tuned novel filled with subtle characterisation and an intelligent treatment of the great Christian themes of guilt, faith, innocence and love.  This, rather than the pretentious pseudo-psychology of Rendell and Symons, the banality of Keating or the self-conscious posing of Hill, is what the modern detective novel should aim for.

To the Bibliography.

To the P.D. James Page.

To the Grandest Game in the World.

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