A Taste for Death (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries Book 7) Kindle Edition

How the world of Detective Adam Dalgleish has changed in 20 years since first his career started during the early 1960s! As reserved and thoughtful as ever, he finds himself surrounded by a London in the midst of a sea change…. with some aspiring, some dropping out and others ready to do nothing short of murder to fulfill their dreams.PD James’ 1986“A Taste for Death”, seventh of the fourteen books featuring her iconic sleuth, is distinctly different from her earlier efforts. Her writing has more diverse characters and descriptive passages sharing an almost disassociation from the world they move through – a curious sense of alienation from community.Many seem to be wanting companionship but struggling with unspoken feelings of isolation and loneliness.As one of the characters reflects to Dalgleish: “They spend most of their youth working to qualify, most of their young manhood building up success – the right wife, the right house, the right schools for the children, the right clubs. For what? For some money, more comfort, a bigger house, a faster car, more taxation. And they don’t even get much of a kick out of it. And there’s another twenty years to be got through.”The opening sets the mystery to unravel initially: grisly murder or murder-suicide of two unlikely companions in a modest church vestry? Sir Paul Berowne, a man who had just abandoned a sure track for personal and professional success, and Harry Mack, a down-on-the-heels local tramp.Both are discovered by Emily Wharton, a sixty-five-year-old spinster looking after the church for Father Barnes and her young companion from the streets, ten-year old Darren Wilkes. Sort of Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby with Dickens’ Artful Dodger. Their relationship will be the alpha-omega bookends of this tale.In between James embellishes the mystery with more reflective looks into the thoughts, ambitions and fears of people coming to terms with new challenges, including women managing in men-dominated workplaces and social scenes - besides the bureaucratic pressure to solve the murder as well as other suspicious deaths tangential to the crime.And cold portrayal of opportunistic media coverage for its own benefits: “Murder was the first destroyer of privacy as it was of so much else.”And flashes of PD James’ sardonic wit expressed through an editor/publisher comment about his stories: “A beautiful young woman with a man over twenty years her senior is always interesting to our readers. It gives them hope…. After all, it was purely factual. Our gossip always is.”This tale will live on with you long after the loving is gone.(Here are links to my other posted Amazon reviews for PD James Adam Dalgleish series:1962 “Cover Her Face”:https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R34QBVHMVAVJ5M?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp1963 “A Mind to Murder”: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1530H85783WVR/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF81967 “Unnatural Causes”:https://www.amazon.com/review/R1SWYILGGRSSGO/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8)

I have decided to read P.D. James entire Adam Dalgliesh series and place all the books in the same review, but I need to write one just for number 7. Here is why.Because her mysteries are so psychologically centered and give such importance to physiology and milieu, one critic had said that reading P.D. James compares to reading Dickens or Zola.Well, not here! Although she describes characters’ appearance with detail, and she seems to have more of them in this novel than Balzac in his entire Comedie Humaine, this is more a Michelin Guide of London ---a guide of London in the Fall--- than a mystery.The murder victim is a minister tired of his political obligations, and consequently seeking God. All over the novel, his supernatural experience is mentioned, but instead of spirituality, we get a circumvoluted plot riding on the cheap and sensational, and infinite descriptions, page fillers that have more affectation than poetry. At least unused words in the dictionary get to breathe some fresh air here. This looks like a desperate attempt to savage a plot, and this is unworthy of the great P.D. James.If you have embarked into her series or if you are not familiar with P.D. James and want to pick one of her novels, you might find A Taste for Death hard to digest. So my advice is to skip it.I have decided to read P.D. James entire Adam Dalgliesh series and place all the books in the same review, but I need to write one just for number 7. Here is why.Because her mysteries are so psychologically centered and give such importance to physiology and milieu, one critic had said that reading P.D. James compares to reading Dickens or Zola.Well, not here! Although she describes characters’ appearance with detail, and she seems to have more of them in this novel than Balzac in his entire Comedie Humaine, this is more a Michelin Guide of London ---a guide of London in the Fall--- than a mystery.The murder victim is a minister tired of his political obligations, and consequently seeking God. All over the novel, his supernatural experience is mentioned, but instead of spirituality, we get a circumvoluted plot riding on the cheap and sensational, and infinite descriptions, page fillers that have more affectation than poetry. At least unused words in the dictionary get to breathe some fresh air here. This looks like a desperate attempt to savage a plot, and this is unworthy of the great P.D. James.If you have embarked into her series or if you are not familiar with P.D. James and want to pick one of her novels, you might find A Taste for Death hard to digest. So my advice is to skip it.

Reading this in order with a book group and this is certainly the best of PDJ's work for me to date. While she still hangs the skeleton of her plot on a police murder investigation, the real meat of the book explores the inner souls of her characters, especially with regard to disillusion, spiritual malaise and complicated forms of guilt.There are some irritations: an excessive attention to descriptions of houses, interiors and precisely what can be seen out of every window adds a frequently unnecessary ponderousness to the writing, as does James' insistence that all her characters read only 'literature' (Elizabeth Bowen, Trollope, and Shakespeare are all name-checked, and characters correct each other on obscure quotations from Austen). They also only listen to classical music and recognise a concerto immediately as soon as they hear a chord, and hang original art on their walls which visitors also appreciate at first glance...That cultural snobbishness aside, this has moved on significantly from the first books which looked back nostalgically at the classic Golden Age crime: now the 'great house' is riddled with unease and corruption - and there's no return to any safety or stability by the end

I have been reading the Adam Dalgliesh books alongside one of my book groups and this is the seventh, published in 1986. I was surprised to realise there was almost a decade between the previous book, “Death of an Expert Witness,” (1977) and this one. She had written a Cordelia Gray novel, but still, it is quite a gap. “A Taste for Death,” is often considered one of her best novels and received awards, as well as being nominated for others. It does come across as literary crime, with a very character driven and detailed storyline.The book begins with an elderly woman, accompanied by a young boy, who discovers the bodies of Sir Paul Berowne, a Minister of the Crown, and a tramp, named Harry Mack, in the vestry of a St Matthews Church. Berowne was an acquaintance of Dalgliesh and, although they had only met a couple of times, it makes the crime a little more personal. Dalgliesh, along with DCI John Massingham and DI Kate Miskin, begin to unravel the reasons why a respected, wealthy man, like Berowne, was found murdered, sleeping in a church.This has a good cast of characters, possible suspects, and motives. I particularly liked Mrs Wharton, who appears at the very beginning of the book, alongside the young, roguish, Darren. I also enjoyed Kate Miskin, and her changing, sometimes difficult, relationship with Massingham. At times, James gets a little bogged down in detail, and description, but, overall, this is a really excellent addition to the series and well as, in places, being truly poignant.

Sir Paul Berowne a recently resigned high flying Tory MP and Harry Mack a tramp are both found dead in a church in Paddington. The scene suggests that it was a murder/suicide but Commander Dalgliesh thinks differently. He has a number of suspects with motive but no opportunity as they all seem to have cast iron alibis and only circumstantial evidence. To be able to solve the crime he needs hard evidence and at least one of the alibis to be broken.

It is a masterpiece of the genre of mystery novel/. Though Ms James was a very conservative person and member of the establisment her books , especially this one cut through the decayed class system of the British society via the study of murder.

The characters are three dimensional and portrayed with human frailty and strength. The plot is an easy ride onto a rollercoaster. All human experience is covered with accuracy and objective, cold realism. I did not want to reach the end of the book. I will definitely be buying more p d james.