A small Anglican theological college on a windy isolated coast has to deal with the death of one of their students and everything that unfolds after that. I enjoyed the description of the place (college and location) as well as the history of the college which was suitably convoluted and watched with interest, if not much involvement, as the story progressed. Enjoyable Easter weekend reading.

This took me forever to read and I am a rather fast reader. It was just so boring and full of wordy descriptions of shit that is IRRELEVANT to the actual book and that made me angry.

Also, it was a mystery, I suppose, although it was obvi who it was.

Also! I didn't read this in one day, but it was so boring that I forgot to even list it here when I started it.

SUCKS TO BE ME BECAUSE IT TOOK FUCKING WEEKS TO GET THROUGH THIS.

A wonderfully written and atmospheric mystery. My first P.D. James. Easy to see why she has such a following…

I have to admit, I agree with those people who were shocked that P D James was so dismissive of child abuse, or rather sympathetic to the plight of a convicted abuser - one of the characters in the book. She implies they made a big fuss about nothing and what does it matter if a few children get touched up. It does demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding, I can only presume she was elderly when she wrote it and somehow missed the education the rest of us received.
Apart from that its a good story - closed community, wild remote coastline, lots of hidden secrets, interesting cast of characters.

The beginning was not promising - an unusually clumsy device used to exposition-dump at the beginning (journal entries) isn't the kind of thing we usually get from PD James. But it grew into a very satisfying story. This one wasn't so much about who-dunit but more about figuring out why they did it, and whether enough evidence would be obtained for an arrest, which had become a fraught question due to the resolution of Dalgliesh's last case.

Another great mystery from a master British mystery writer! Everyone's got a motive.

Oh so slow. How a book with this many deaths, plus incest and religious desecration could mostly be so dull and plodding I do not know. I was particularly bothered, though, by the insertion of a pedophile priest character -- because, incredibly, PD James seems only to have included him to express her indignation that such people might actually be prosecuted and imprisoned. According to her, molestation doesn't really hurt anyone as it is harmless touching. I am wondering if I'll be reading any more of her books, though I have been a long time reader. Dalgleish does develop a love interest -- in his veddy veddy British standoffish sort of way -- in this book, so maybe. But James needs to spend some time finding out how traumatizing child abuse is for VICTIMS.