Thursday, January 15, 2015

Unnatural Causes by P. D. James

5Jan. Kindle.

A colony of writers in a remote corner of England - an obvious setting for a murder. One of the writers, who actually remains rather aloof from the others, is Adam Dalgliesh's Aunt Jane, which puts Dalgliesh on the scene. In fact, Dalgliesh himself is a writer and has published a couple of volumes of poetry. Aunt Jane writes scholarly works on birds and birding. The mystery writer is the one who ends up dead.

This is an extremely convoluted plot, even for James. In essence it is a "country house" murder - limited pool of suspects with interrelated motives. And, classically, the least likely character (setting aside Aunt Jane) turns out to be the murderer. Of course, the murder of a mystery writer gives James the opportunity to insert all sorts of jabs at mystery writers as a group - good fun.

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