1967 detective fiction, third of James's novels of Inspector Adam
Dalgliesh. Dalgleish is on holiday, visiting his aunt's cottage on the
Suffolk coast; but one of the local writers has gone missing, and soon
the police announce that his body has been found.
This is a cunning one. As usual everyone is horrid, but less
usually everyone manages to have their virtues too; the killer's
motive (announced, after a surprising action scene, in a taped
confession) may appear weak, but it seemed to me the perfect motive
for that particular killer. These are well-observed people… in a
setting that makes rather less sense, with all these writers more or
less detesting each other but still choosing to have their cottages in
the same place (with nothing by way of facilities – no noticeable
village, never mind a village shop). One significant figure is very
obviously a red herring, and mostly wastes pages – odd when the ending
feels so hasty.
The book's less bound to its time than the first two, perhaps because
most of it takes place at a remove from the action of the world; some
talk about the tawdriness of night-clubs puts it as "not in the
present day", but it could fit anywhere from the 1950s to the 1970s. A
piece of business with rail tickets is perhaps inspired by Sayers,
though a mention of the murdered writer's work seems more like a
parody:
Briggs, who was occasionally called Briggsy by the Honourable Martin
in an excess of spurious camaraderie, had a humility which they
hadn't detected in [the actual Inspector]. Despite his eminence at
the Yard Briggsy was always happy to play second fiddle to
Carruthers, and so far from resenting the Honourable Martin's
interference with his cases, made a practice of calling him in when
his special expertise was required. Since Carruthers was an expert
on wine, women, heraldry, the landed gentry, esoteric poisons and
the finer points of the minor Elizabethan poets, his opinion was
frequently invaluable.
In fact this ends up being rather more about Dalgleish than the
previous books: he's not the official investigator, and he's
considering a significant personal decision (one reason for his
holiday). There's a significant amount of quiet reflection that leaves
this series lead looking rather more interesting and appealing.
Followed by Shroud for a Nightingale.
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